Seaside

January 7, 2002-Fairy Penguins
(photos:Fairy Penguins,
Toby & 5 0f 12 Apostles)

After the sweltering sojourn in the old Jewish neighborhood, we made it back to the tour bus office in time for a 5 PM tour of Phillips Island last night. The island isn’t so great, but that’s where the fairy penguins can be seen coming ashore every night. The two hour ride took us past the foothills of the Dandenong Range & through pastureland.

Our driver gave a running commentary the whole time. Some of the information was interesting & some not. We now know how to tell the difference between sheep being raised for wool & those being raised for meat. The ones for wool are taller. They’ve been bred with longer legs so their wool will stay up out of the burrs & be easier & more economical to clean. The driver also gave us the interesting result of the government homebuyers incentive. First time buyers can get $A 7,000 with no strings attached towards the purchase of a home. If you’re building a new house, you get $A 14,000. This was supposed to fight a possible recession & help people get out of the rent cycle. What it has done is deplete the rental market so that many properties are vacant & landlords are unable to find anyone to fill them.

We were running early, so the driver took a detour to see the Nobbies, a rock formation also known as Seal Rock. Seals, unlike penguins, are unreliable. There was only one seal that night. Penguins come out of the ocean at sunset every night. They use the cover of darkness for safety. They’re the smallest of the penguins & are really a dark blue color rather than the usual black. Their dark coloration against the pale sand of the beach makes them very visible to predators.

We grabbed a bite at the café & headed to the beach to wait. There are stands for viewing the event & the beach is somewhat illuminated by the park rangers. I expected all the penguins to storm the beach at once ala the Normandy invasion. That’s not what happened at all. The beach was full of seagulls just hanging out. At first, we saw what we thought was a tiny piece of wood bobbing in the foam. Fortunately, we had our binoculars & were able to see that it was really a penguin. One lone bird was the advance scout for the night. He behaved in what we were to see was typical fashion for the penguins that followed. There was a great deal of vacillation back & forth. It was as if they’d never come ashore before & had to muster the courage to leave the safety of the sea. They mostly came in groups of 6-10. We realized how tiny they were when they were next to the seagulls. The penguins were about the same body length as the gulls, but fuller around. They wobbled their way across the sand & beat a path for their burrows.

Fairy Babies

This was breeding season, so we were able to see the chicks as well. Adult males & females commuted daily. They fished all day & returned to feed the young at night. There was a boardwalk stretching through their nesting area & we were able to follow their progress to the nests. The babies created a racket as their parents approached. A beak full of regurgitated seafood being inserted into their gullets silenced their insistent yowling. One of the birds needed to cross the driveway near the offices to get to what had been his family nest for generations. Rangers cleared tourists from the path at the appropriate time. We watched as the tiny penguin made his solo march between a phalanx of tennis shoes, hiking boots, & sandals on his programmed mission. To say that they totally charmed us would not do it justice. The experience was captivating, miraculous, & awe inspiring. The penguins have gone on relentlessly. Humans have come to respectfully share the experience with them. The penguins have graciously adapted to the audience & the humans have been enriched.

We got back to our hotel at 1 AM & had to be up early to get our rental car at 8:30 AM. We did some “mop up” touring of Melbourne today before taking off to the west. We saw the infamous nude painted circa 1851, Chloe, at the Young & Jackson Hotel. At St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, built during the gold rush of 1859, the abundance of decorative gold leaf in the mosaic placed it in history.

Great Road, Great Ride

Today our destination was the Great Ocean Road. It weaves its way along the southern coast with crags & cliffs falling into the sea on one side & grasslands alternating with mountain ranges & rainforests on the other. We were in Queenscliff in time for lunch at the hotel of the same name. It’s a grandly restored Victorian mansion with typical ironwork trim. The popularity of ironwork had a practical origin. Ships used iron as ballast. The trim was an effort not to have the iron go to waste. The restaurant has an excellent reputation & we couldn’t resist the pastrami sandwich with pureed beetroot, horseradish sauce, sauerkraut & lettuce on rye.

Bells Beach was on our list of places to see. It has world-class surf & surfers except for today. There was a stiff wind coming from the shore, so there were no waves to be seen. As the day wore on, we noticed more & more No Vacancy signs appearing. We decided to pull into an unassuming motel in Apollo Bay. We got one of the last two rooms. Luck was with us. It is a Spa room overlooking the ocean. We’re in heaven. It had been raining on & off all day, but the sun came out as we walked into the room. There’s a rainbow over the water & David just woke up from his nap. It sounds like dinnertime to me.

January 8, 2002-End To Beginning

David said there is nothing odd about Jews staying in a stable. Our particular stable doesn’t have a manger now, but maybe it did in 1860. We’re in Mortlake, home of the Australian Buskers Championship. Jane & Bruce are our hosts at the Shadwell Hotel & Stables Motel. Remember, here a hotel is a tavern/pub. We had tea at the hotel after we checked in. Remember, tea is dinner when it’s served after 6pm. It’s a fastidiously clean place built of native bluestone that’s actually dark gray. The motel units look old but were built five years ago. They’re adjacent to the stables. It’s the kind of place where locals congregate. We’d called ahead for reservations & were identifiable even before we opened our mouths. The bonus here is that Oscar & his people are regulars & I got to play with him. He’s a guide dog (yellow lab). His person took his harness off so he’d be off duty while I petted & he licked.

Now that you know how our day ended, I’ll take it from the top. Our rental car was losing air in a tyre (it is an Aussie car, so it has Aussie spelling). The couple that noticed it asked how long we’d be in Australia. We explained about David working & they asked what he did. This couple was Jewish & we now have their home phone #. We might just look them up when we go to Sydney. We went to a filling station to put air in the tyre. I didn’t realize that in seaside communities a full service station included an outdoor people shower.

The highway took a detour through Ottway National Park, a rainforest. When it emerged, the scenery was classically pastoral. The colors were shades of green & blue with black & white cows. No, it wasn’t only the sky that was blue, but also the hay bales that were covered in bright blue plastic.

We’d seen photos of this stretch of rugged coastline in Port Campbell National Park, but were unprepared for the actual spectacle. It’s known as the Badlands of the Southern Ocean. For a period of 2.5 million years, the sea & weather have eroded the sandstone cliffs. In many instances, such a huge amount of the cliff has dissolved that the remaining sandstone masses stand as lone sentinels in the sea. The most famous of these is the Twelve Apostles. They’re enormous pinnacles jutting out of the roaring surf. They were wearing away as we watched & will eventually tumble into the froth. The entire coast is known as a graveyard for ships & as we traveled west we passed Loch Ard Gorge & a cemetery where sailors were buried. The grandeur of the Gorge left us speechless. It is a mammoth curving arc of sandstone into which the sea has worn an arch. It sits on its own surrounded by violent turquoise waves that roar their assault & heave at the rock in an eternal battle. We pulled off at every overlook to gasp in awe. The blowhole, the Bay of Martyrs, & Bay of Islands seemed to be baby Apostle wannabes, but were wonderful in their own right. One of the formations is called London Bridge. Part of this London Bridge has fallen down. Sea=1-Bridge=0. I couldn’t resist singing the song.

Port Fairy, originally named Belfast, was our next stop. It’s a 19th century fishing village & thought to be the most picturesque in Victoria. It boasts 50 cottages designated as landmarks by the National Trust. We weren’t disappointed. We found a cyber café nestled among the old homes as well as Levinson’s Jewelers. We stopped in to scope out the Levinsons & learned they come from generations of jewelers from Poland by way of England. They arrived in Australia in 1859 for the gold rush. We played a bit of Jewish geography. My father is from Poland. We may be related. They say there’s not really a Jewish presence in this largely Irish area.

It was an easy drive to Mortlake. Tonight, we’ll be serenaded by galahs. They’re parrot-like gray birds with pink breasts. Tomorrow, they’ll awaken us, I’m sure.

Toby