Enjoying the surf Apollo Bay

On the beach, a family clad in wetsuits enjoyed the water and waves at the beach. It is off season here - early fall - but this weekend is Labour Day for Australia so the hotels are filling up. Australians take their vacations seriously and don't miss a day. We must duke it out with them for space at the hotels!

Welcome to The Great Ocean Road

Let the driving begin!

Monument to the soldiers who built the Great Ocean Road

Constructed by Australian veterans of the First World War, mostly by pick and shovel, the Great Ocean Road is a testament to public works projects. Designed to provide employment for returning veterans it remains one of the world's great drives. Unlike the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur, the GRO has more actual beach access and although it has high points and sweeping vistas like the PCH, it also has beach communities along the way. The vegetation reminds you of northern California, as does the weather. In our opinion the PCH is far more dramatic.

Did not finish the last course

John pushed this aside and said he would have finished it but he just didn't like it that much. Honestly, that's what he said.

Rethinking our criteria for hotel selection

We were lucky enough to find a hotel with a washer and dryer in a little room right outside the door. It is nice to be stocked back up with 100% clean clothes

Ten Minutes By Tractor

The name of the restaurant and vineyard where we enjoyed about 3 hours of non-stop tasting menu - delicious chow paired with their different wines for about 6 or 7 courses. We lost count.

Views, big bath and breakfast outside. Perfect!!

Just missing champagne, which is criminal given we are in Chardonnay territory. How did we let that happen?  This penninsula is south of Melbourne and a big spot for weekend getaways in wine and farming area with a lot of beach activity along the bay.

Mornington Penninsula Hotel

Here are some inside shots. A very styling place with outstanding bathroom as well. And killer views!

An odd hotel

This is the entrance to the Port Phillip Estate Winery. Beautiful modern building with a highly rated restaurant and tasting room on the top floor and six beautlful hotel rooms overlooking the vineyard on the bottom. The second shot and shots below show our room from outside and inside. Why odd? This is first and foremost a winery. The building was only completed last fall so they seem new to the hotel business. There is nothing, and I mean nothing related to the hotel in the building except the rooms. When you enter the front door (swings mysteriously open as you approach) you are in a large room anteroom which is all glass on one side - the side facing the vineyard. Glass doors slide open elevator style and you go into the restaurant and tasting room. But if you look to your left there is an almost imperceptible door with a card key lock. This is the entrance to the hotel rooms. Use your key, then take either an elevator or stairs to go down to the hotel rooms. But here's the thing. The dining room is only open for dinner Thursday through Sunday. We were there Tuesday and Wednesday. So on our days the whole place shuts down at 5:00 PM. And I mean shuts down. Everyone goes home. Come home after dark and there isn't a light on in the entire building or parking lot. Once you get out of your car and use the card key to open the front door all the exterior lighting for the building comes on but nothing until then. Remember once inside there's no receeption and nobody from the hotel. To make it even more intersting, on the two nights we were there we were the ONLY guests. Not another person in the building with us. Not another car in the lot. Get the pcture? I frankly think most people would not have gotten out of their car.

Koala Conservation Center

We went to this center that has elevated boardwalks so you are closer to the koalas. It was pretty small but actually nice and it was easy to see five or six of the little critters in fairly short order. Not sure why they stay put here since it's not fenced. There was also a larger area to walk around on ground level but they stay high in the trees so it's tough to find them, hence the boardwalks. Anyway it started to rain so we were there just long enough to get a good look.

Great colors

Late afternoon on Phillip Island and the colors were really vivid.

Lucky shot

I was trying to get a picture of this bird and only noticed after I got home that he had a bug in his mouth.

Parade of the Penguins

This is what Phillip Island is most famous for. Every night hundreds/thousands of penguins return to their nests on the island after spending the day feeding at sea. The return is so predictable that there is a theater where you can watch it happen and every day bus loads of tourists make the two hour trek from Melbourne to do just that. It happens around 8:30 PM this time of year and as soon as it's over they get on the bus and drive back. These are also tiny birds, no more than about 8-10 inces tall. We happened to be here near the end of the breeding sason so you don't see as many birds. Now they start to molt. These two little guys are molting and during this period they stay on land all day for almost three weeks, that means no food for three weeks, so they fatten themselves up to get ready. Although we saw lots of them at night, cameras of any kind are prohibited at the "parade" so this was the only picture we were able to get.

Phillip Island

Just off the coast of southern Australia. Great views and wild life.

Nature! Front yard garden at our cottage on Phillip Island

Cute cottage. Now almost time to hunt wallabies, mini-penguins and other creatures. For the past 2 months we have spent most of our time in cities with populations close to 15 million. The population of all Australia is only about 20 million total. The only smaller cities where we stayed were Singapore and Hong Kong with around 6M each but they make up for it in density. If the rest of the world lived like those cities, we could fit the 6 billion+ global population in Texas. Check my math - seriously!! It is good to have some space here.

Self Explanatory

Make a stop at the shop downstairs because you know what's coming when you get to the second floor.

Great Meal

Is this something Mr. Gill started? Very popular and great food but they didn't seem to remember him.

Sunday beach

This beach was cold and totally empty two days ago. Melbourne has been in a cold spell so everyone is taking advantage of the beautiful weekend sunshine.

What a difference a day makes 2

Same spot plus 48 hours and 20 degrees. This is the exact same spot at the Stokehouse Restaurant, St. Kilda's taken 48 hours apart. Today - Sunday - was about 80 degrees vs. 60 for the first picture on Friday. The beach was jammed and Friday's empty restaurant didn't have an available seat or place on the grass.

Classic

Warm summer night, wooden roller coaster, arms up . . . . nice.

The World LOVES Sweets

Everywhere you go people are crazy about sweets. Coffee and sweets are a worldwide obsession which dessert-phobic Americans do not seem to share, or at least not to the same degree. This is one of three shops on a very short block.

HELP ......

We are Mini-Me. They followed us from Shanghai to Australia and snuck up on us when we weren't looking.

Eva, Bill and Jim - Pinot

With apologies to anyone I have left out, you three are my go to guys on wine. This is a 2008 Pinot. The picture does not do it justice but this is exceptionally light in color. This was not our favorite but a really good Pinot. Leayton Estate 2008 Yarra Valley Pinot Noir. Check it out.

Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2011

The MF&W Festival started last night. There are events throughout the city but today we went to a wine tasting that included about 100 wineries from around Melbourne. It was great because we may not be able to tour this area, so seeing all the vineyards in one place was huge. There were also a few microbrews. As you can imagine this is Shiraz country and they had some great ones but there were also many, many Pinots. We made several purchases to take on the road with us for a nice bottle at the end of the day, but right now our hands down favorite is from Whitlands Vineyard, Holly's Garden, "luddite" Pinot Noir 2009.

PS - John had a good time.

Bike the beach

Biking along the beach in Melbourne. We lucked out since they had just purchased all new bikes for the year. Great equipment, beautiful ride along St. Kilda beach, Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne. About 25 kilometers out and back from our hotel.

Kite surfing St. Kilda, Melbourne

We took a bike ride around St. Kilda beach in Melbourne. Really nice bike path and lots of kite surfers. Apparently many of these now include an inflatable collar so you see all these guys blowing up the kite before they go out. This really looks like fun although I can't figure exactly how they balance this so the thing just doesn't take off and drag them right out of the water and across the road. But I bet Andy Gill knows? Is your weight balanced to the size of your kite, or all just depends on your skill. Either way, we might need to give this a try, although in calmer winds and bluer waters. No wet suits please.

A beer on the Yarra river with Mel

Now we're at a restaurant in the middle of the river near the CBD in Melbourne, after a great loop bike ride by the war memorial, the Formula 1 racetrack they are putting together in Albert park, the beachfront where we saw many kiteboarders now back to city center to meet a friend.

Wish Mel were here ... and she is!

I brought along papers in some manila envelopes. Not sure how but these envelopes contained about 5 pictures of my mother. So Mel, today you are having lunch with us at Stokehouse on St. Kilda beach. We had mussels and soft-shell crab since your picture is not allergic to shellfish ;)

A little something special for Stefanie

This is the outside of a building in downtown Melbourne. Sorry the picture is a little blurry but you get the idea. The bees as you can see are huge, covering the front of the building.

This has been hard on the waistline

Take a look at two appetizers from a restaurant where we had lunch yesterday. One is "sticky" pork with pan seared scallop. Sticky pork turns out to be two pieces of pork belly with the fat (and you can see there is plenty) seared to a crisp and a sweet chili glaze. Delicious but not exactly health food. The other is a crab salad with tempura oysters. Add to that a dinner consisting of (1) a wild boar cheeseburger and fries, and (2) pasta with lobster, and you can see what we mean. Then of course there was the beer and wine, both of which are pretty good in Australia. We went out to dinner witth some friends who then insisted on taking us to an italian pastry shop for coffee and dessert. They are going to have to roll us onto the plane home.

Let the planning begin

Well we have arrived in Australia and this is the first place where we have absolutely no plans, no hotel reservations, and no real idea of what we're going to do or how long we are going to stay in a particular place. Now is when it gets fun. We just stopped at the tourist center and Elizabeth is pouring over all the materials we got, not to mention her purchase showign all the best food and wine 2011. Melbourne has become something of a foodie paradise and just trying to decide things like which wine region to go to takes a lot of time. I know, poor us. Weather was beautiful today, like an early fall day in NYC. Once again we are being told this is the coldest March in YEARS. We seem to carry this with us wherver we go. But cold here meant high 60s with a promise of high 70s by week end. This is the first time we have been out of Asia for two months and the different feel of a more western city is obvious to us. Part of it is language. Although English has not been a problem anywhere we have traveled, it's been a more basic sort of communication. You can ask how much something is or what's on the menu but getting more detail and the real nuance is much more difficult. Anyway, Australia is beautiful and we hope to have some good pictures to share with you.