Waiting and No Waves

Melbourne's beaches are fairly sheltered as compared to Sydney's so there is no real waves to had here. Which is too bad, as we are going to be here for a few more days before we get our wheels.

After weighing a variety of options, we have decided to buy an '86 Toyota Camry wagon with 270,000 kms on it, for the affordable price of $1500. Which isn't too bad split three ways . The only hitch in the plan is that they needed the car until Monday - they being Graham and Anne, a Scottish couple in their sixties - so we are hanging out at St. Kilda's Beach House, a hostel near the water, until Monday. In terms of transferring the vehicle into our name, Australia has a fairly easy system to navigate. The rego, registration and third-party insurance, is easily transferable from one owner to the next, so the our vehicle will be legal until August, which will be a nice selling feature once we try to sell it in about a month.

So what have we been doing in Melbourne? Primarily catching up on sleep. But yesterday we did head down to the beach to see if we could get a look at the fairy penguins. Jordache had taken an early morning walk down the beach and had learned where the penguins usually come in at dusk. So, around 8:30 PM we headed down to the beach as the sun set with our cameras in hand. At the end of a pier there was outcropping of rocks, and it was here that the additional walkways had been built up around the rocks to afford walkers the vantage point to see the birds without scrambling over the rocks. The sun had set by the time we made our way to the end of the pier, and we thought we may have been too late.

There were about four or five Melburnians in fluorescent vests on the Penguin Patrol, making sure that no one used the flash on their cameras or tried to pick up a penguin. One of them told us that with the full moon, the penguins might elect to stay out all night for the good fishing. We waited for a few more minutes and eventually saw a light "V" cutting through the water at what seemed to be about 10 km/hr and up onto the shore came the unmistakable shape of a fairy penguin. The Penguin Patrol were more than happy to use their flashlights to highlight it with red beams as it slowly waddled its way toward the rocks and then disappeared into a crevice. We saw a few more roosting in the rocks after that, but given the dark lighting pictures were pretty difficult and we headed back after about twenty minutes of penguin watching.