Long Weekend in Melbourne

Unlike the US, Labor Day weekend for New South Wales Australia is the first Monday of October, not September.  So we took advantage of the long weekend and went to Melbourne for the weekend. A quick one hour flight away to the state of Victoria.

After arriving late Friday night we began our tour of Melbourne on Saturday.  It was time for our Penguin Tour on Phillips Island after a quick view of Federation Square.  We took a tour bus to Phillips Island (2 hour drive each way) to see the March of the Penguins.  At dusk every night, hundreds to thousands of penguins basically body surf out of the ocean and waddle up the beach to their borrows to mate/feed young and rest after a long day of fishing.  It was really cool to see all these penguins walking in little lines up the beach.  You can't take pictures though because about 10 years ago there were a lot of penguins dying and they realized it was because they went blind, and couldn't survive because they rely on their eye sight so much.  Due to all the camera flashes, the penguins went blind.  So no photos for penguin eyesight sake!  We got back from this around 10pm and went to bed after a quick dinner because our Great Ocean Road Tour started at 6:45am the next morning and this was a 14 hour tour so we needed to be rested.  And on top of this it was day light savings time and we sprang ahead so we lost an hour of sleep!  It's weird to spring ahead when I know it's fall at home, but everything is reversed below the equator. 

The Great Ocean Road is a beautiful 300 kilometer road that hugs the coast line with beautiful features.  We stopped at numerous touristy photo op points.  First we stopped at Bells Beach, a famous surfing beach.  Then we stopped at the famous Great Ocean Road sign. 

Following that we went to Kennett River followed by Ottoway National Rainforest for a brief walk.  The next stop was the main site - the 12 Apostles.   
We took a 10 minute helicopter ride over them and that was amazing.  They are named the 12 Apostles because they are rock features that are naturally formed in a beautiful structure except there aren't 12, there used to be 9 and now there are only 8 because one crumbled into the sea.  

After seeing the 12 Apostles from the sky we briefly saw them by land before moving on to Loch Ard Gorge (to the left).  

The last and final stop on the Great Ocean Road Tour before driving 300 kilometers back to Melbourne was the London Bridge.  We got back very late again and had some dinner and went to bed.

On Monday it was our first chance to explore the city of Melbourne so we pretty much just spent the day exploring the cafes, shops, alleyways, beach area etc.  Melbourne was nice, but definitely not my city of choice.   All in all, a fun long weekend!