Brighton Bath Box & Healesville Sanctuary

 Brighton Beach**** in Melbourne

Cute bath boxes which is sold at a high price! Owning one of these huts means you have at least AUD$50,000 extra! Using it for changing beach wear and etc!

  
Healesville Sanctuary**** entrance fee $25, with YHA discount of 10%. The main featured animals are kangaroos, koala, platypus, lyrebird, tasmanian devil and wombat. It showcase the native animals of Australia.

 Birds of Prey show.

Black-breasted Buzzard shows us how it breaks the egg  using a stone. Other than that, the cockatoo, wedge-tailed eagle & barking owl made appearance as well.

When the time of wedge-tailed eagle show out, there is another wild eagle flying up at the far top of the showground and try to chase away the park's eagle to mark its territory. That reminds us of the seagull, even though they are small but they are also the bird of prey and always try to scream at another seagull, especially if someone is feeding them! This happens everywhere in Australia seaside.

Lyre Bird, is the bird of Mimic and owns an extraordinary ability! It sings beautifully and mimics the voice of other birds like the Laughing Kookaburra. They can even mimic the dingos, koalas and humans!! It also fans out its tail (like the pic above) to court the female.

Zebra Finch

Cockatiel, the smallest of the cockatoos

Tawny Frogmouth, it's not an owl! It looked so grumpy =.=

Black -Winged Stilt, very long legs, looks like a pretty girl. Fact: They live on inland lakes and swamps but they can barely swim!

We have almost seen most of the animals in this sanctuary throughout our trip from Western Aus to Melbourne. But for Francis dad or any other tourists coming to visit for the first time, we think this sanctuary is the perfect place to go, to know more of the Australian animals!

For $10 extra for the ‘Magic Moment’ ticket, people can get upclose with featured animals such as the tasmanian devil, koala, and wombat. We think it is quite worth it to pay the $10, to have a special guide telling you about the animals, and maybe a chance to touch them?

Our last dinner with John, at his house. It was a good Australian meal, roast chicken, meat pie and chips&salad! A simple meal, but it brings lots of pleasure and satisfaction. It also lets P’s dad found out that his favourite food is Meat Pie! The Four n Twenty brand is the best!

We spent quite some time in Melbourne city alone before and after going Tasmania. Overall we think Melb is quite a relaxing place to live cause it is multi racial (means lots of good food =P), with convenient public transport and beautiful old buildings. And it is not as crowded as Sydney.

 

Melbourne City with Peter's Dad

Second day in Melbourne, walking tour around the city by our local guide, John. That is St Paul’s Cathedral which is located just opposite the Flinders Station. Look at the design of this church, the feeling is so peaceful even though it is just in the middle of city center.

Cute CombiVan coffee vendor =)

John going to take us to a famous patisserie, on the way we past by Royal Arcade.

Very interesting cakes~ Oh my. . 

Irresistable but not it's not this shop we are going to.

But this one, tea time @ Laurent, French patisserie

Suburb of St Kilda

Savoury dinner @ Jim’s Greek Tavern (Add: 32 John St, Collingwood). Our second time here. Great recommendation from our friend, David. Their food is really delicious and all cooked with real fresh ingredient. This shop is one of the oldest greek restaurant in Melb. We start off with the dip platter, then Saganaki [baked cheese, MUST TRY!], grilled octopus, saganaki prawn, vine leaf rice, lamb gyro then finishing with a greek salad! Oh so FULL~ ~ And it didn’t cost more than $25 per person! Real good deal.

Footscray - Vietnamese Village

 

 With Francis and John

It’s the night sail this time back to Melbourne, departing at 7.30pm and arrived Melbourne around 6.30am. For the night sail, the cheapest ticket to get is the Ocean Recliner, a designated seat which costs about $20 more than the day sail ticket. For the ocean recliner, we are provided with a small pillow and blanket, and the reclining seat is way bigger than the airplanes’. Hehe. We slept the whole journey~ No trouble Zzzz at all =P there are few people who just laid the blanket and sleep on the floor. No one will disturb them anyway.

We have already arranged staying at John’s house prior arriving Melbourne. John is friend of Peter’s dad. Very kind of him that we can have a comfortable bed to sleep in~! P’s dad arrived the next night; he had to take the next flight to Melb because he did not apply for the ETA visa into Australia. Malaysian passport is required to apply the visa either online or through agency before entering Aus. We came into OZ using our Work and Holiday Visa, so never thought of reminding P’s dad to apply ETA. How careless of us! Anyhow, he managed to come to OZ, to see his not too long gone SON and long time no see friend(about 40 years)!

We had four days in Melbourne before travelling towards Sydney. It was a full fun four days trip with the best local guide (John) and most comfy accommodation we could ever ask for! At least P’s dad can get some good sleep before going on camping with US! =P

The first day, we went to the western suburb of Footscray. It is hub for the Vietnamese immigrants and African immigrants come in after them, which was once the Greeks. But the Greek moved out many years back after gaining some prosperity, and so came the Vietnamese. We went to the Little Saigon Market, which offers lots of fruits and veggies and free tasting too! Many of the fruits which cannot be found in Woolworths/ Coles. There are many Viet restaurant around here. 

Since today has the good weather and unlimited visibility, so we went to Eureka 88*****, the tallest building in Melbourne. The entrance fee is $17.50, but Metcard and YHA card will be entitled for 10-15% discount. It was worth it to get up here and look at the 360̊ skyline. We came here before sunset and wait till it gets really dark to get the changing colour palette. 

Yarra River

Melbourne CBD

This is one of the BEST night scene photo we taken for the night. 

Melbourne City + the reflection on Eureka 88

Little tip for photographers, since the observation deck is covered with glass, so we use Angie's dark jacket to cover the camera lens and attached onto the glass to minimize the reflection.

 

A tip in avoiding the expensive parking fee in Melbourne is to park at the Crown Casino! It is $6 for the first six hours and if you join their member club (which is FREE), you get to park for FREE each time. And they will even give you $5 (either cash/chip) for joining~ What a perfect offer!! Walking to the Eureka 88 from casino is just about 10minutes, and you can easily access the city via the City Free Circle Tram/ Shuttle Bus. When we travel in the city, we always take the public transport instead of driving. Which is always more convenient.

Back at the casino, there is a fire show every hour, on the hour starting from 7pm. Quite an impressive show! Real HOT!