Human Target

Today was long, exciting and has completely wiped me out. Most everyone decided to go shopping this morning but my uncle and I opted out in lieu of watching the Melbourne Marathon and hitting the casino. He won some, I lost some, what can ya do. Before reaching the casino however Mike pointed to this ice cream van and told me to go stand next to it for a picture. I didn't get why and he told me to read the side....this picture was the result:



After lunch our guide picked us up and drove us an hour and a half south to Phillip Island. This area of Australia is surprisingly green and lush. It reminds me a great deal of northern California. We hit a myriad of picturesque spots here and there but finally we ended up at this nature conservancy filled with Koalas and Wallabies. Their signs around the park were hysterical. There were plaques with pictures instructing you to not scream at the koalas, not to touch the koalas asses and above all not to shake the koalas out of the trees. Well that certainly took the wind out of my sails ;) Our next stop took us to these unbelievable cliffs at the very southern edge of Australia (about 1800 miles north of Antarctica) where millions of gulls were nesting and where we were to watch the penguins emerge from the ocean. I decided to ditch the family and wander on the decking the wound all around the cliffs. This proved to be a mistake as I pissed off a few of the gulls all which unfortunately wound up on camera. The video was too large for blogger so I had to upload it to youtube; you can watch it here.

The penguin portion of the evening, to my complete dismay, forbid you from taking any sort of photography, video or otherwise as it disturbs the animals. Essentially we sat out on this private deck and right after sun down these small, ADORABLE penguins began to flock out of the sea in droves and would walk up the beach and hike up the hills into their little burrows. It took great restraint not to stick one under my coat to smuggle home. They're just so damn cute waddling around and trying to keep up with one another.

In any event, we're finally back to the hotel and completely sapped of energy. Tomorrow is an early one as we have a 9am flight to Sydney. More antics to come......