Port Fairy

we did some 4 wheel driving in the bush and had a walk on the highest tree top boardwalk in the world.

הרבצנו נסיעה של מאתיים ומשהו קילומטר עד לפורט פיירי.
כל מה שניתן להגיד על הדרך ועל פורט פיירי זה שירד טונה של גשם כל הדרך
וגם בפורט פיירי ירד טונה של גשם - זה כמובן קשור לבצורת הקשה מאוד ששוררת כאן ובכל מקלחת בכל קמפינג הם כותבים לנו לחסוך במים כי יש בצורת קשה ולעשות רק 3 דקות מקלחת ולא לישטוף את האוטו וכו וכו

שאלתי מישהו כמה גשם יורד כאן בזמן בצורת והוא אמר שבערך 1000 ממ בשנה - שזה פי 5 ממה שיורד בבאר שבע - לאוסטרלים האלה אין מושג מה זה בצורת...

בדרך לפורט פיירי, בין הטיפות הספקנו לראות את אחד הדברים המפורסמים באוסטרליה - ה-12 אופוסולס שזה 12 השליחים - 12 סלעים ענקיים מזדקרים לאורך החוף במים לאורך הגרייט אושן רואד

Lorne and Apollo Bay

From Torquay we continued to Lorne and did a few day treks at the the falls there - here we are on a trek that warns us that there are snakes about ...

This is a typical street in Lorne

And here we are stopping along the way on the great ocean road






From Lorne we went on to Apollo bay and stayed at a nice camping place on the hill over looking the ocean and eating fish and chips all day and night.

Torquay - surfers paradise

Torquay is the surf capital of the region, in a few weeks they are having a national competition called rip-curl, where surfers come from all oer Australia to surf compete.


You can see me doing my surf thing in the above pic ... i am just begining so don't judge me so fast... (stam - i wish that was me on that wave)

They have many beaches for all levels of surfers.
The day we arrived was ideal for surfing - it was very hot - around 36 degrees and the waves were good too - so I (eran) decided that this is where I am going to take surfing lessons.


I took a 2 hour session and it was G R E A T !!!
I love it.
The next day it rained when the heat broke and it was only 22 degrees but the day after that I rented a wet suit and a surf board and went surfing again.

I got washed up by the waves many times and they were high and good and i even managed to stand a few times.

We also went to see the sundial but there wasn't much sun so we couldn't actually stand and see our shade show the hour but we did that in a different sundial a few weeks back.

In Torquay we also figured out at last what the "TAB" places are in Australia - they are like mini casino places that have computer machines like that ones in Vegas and it turns out that many Australians like these places - and they are all around Australia.
So we lost our 5$ of course but it was fun.
And they also have restaurants attached to the TABs with indoor playgrounds for kids to pay while their parents spend money on the machines.



Torquay is the first town on the famous Australian great ocean road which is a long scenic road that runs right by the occean through several towns.

Sorrento - Queenscliff - Leopold - Geelong

From Phillip island we moved on to Sorrento and took a ferry to Queenscliff (40 min ferry ride).
A pack of dophins followed the ferry and showed off many tricks during the ride to the ppl on board. They swim very fast and they jumped over each other along the way.


From Queenscliff we went to Leopold a small suburb of the regional city Geelong - we went to a trailer camp right on the sea and got to see some great sun sets.


Geelong is a lovely city on the bay with great green parks and a boardwalk and a free public pool with a water fountain near a circular boardwalk that goes into the sea and has board jumps for ppl to jump into the water. Meytar and I jumped right in and swam to a small float island in the middle. Meytar is getting real confident with her swimming since we got her the swim jacket and she is not afraid to swim in deep water too.





Geelong also has a very old carousel that they kept working - so we did that of course too.

Phillip Island and Penguin Parade

We left Melbourne south east to Phillip Island which is a national park island connected to the coast with a bridge and it has many wildlife there.

We stopped on the way to there at a wild life park that had kangaroos and we fed them too - they were so nice - we made some movies with nitai trying to catch one kangaroo's ear.

Phillip Island is famous for it's "penguin parade" - each night the penguins come ashore from the sea and go to there burrows and this is the season of their feather changing so they stay on land for about 2 weeks before they go back to sea. They built special wooden briges and seats so that ppl won't interfere with their natural habitat.
It was really amazing to see all those penguins coming ashore, walking 2-3 meters by you and continuing on to their burrows.
It was quite cold that evning so we wore all our warm cloths and nitai fell asleep in his pram in a special non windy warm area they set up for prams. The australians are really great when it comes to designing comforts - they do think of everything in advance.

In this pic you can see the seats in front of the beach where ppl come to see the penguins.


We went also to the traditional pelican feeding at noon where a fish and chips shop throws them lots of fish and many ppl come to see all the pelicans.

We went to a heritage farm on the island too and fed the farm animals and read about the settlers that came to the island.

Extra pictures (for Shiri) :

Meytar at the telescope that looks at the seal island near phillip island
(Meytar is looking for aliens now)

Melbourne and Yarra valley

We reached melbourne finally - back to a big city.
Eyzeh Balagan - traffic everywhere - it takes ages to get from one place to the other and we always get lost in the million suburbs ... we stayed at a BIG4 caravan park in coburg in the northen part of the city.

Went to see the CBD (city business district) - which is the main area of the city. Used the Trams a lot (electric cable buses) and experienced on first hand driving in the CBD with the caravan and taking the famous right turn from the left lane (special crazy laws of melbourne).

Went to the botanical gardens and federation square and melbourne museum and I (eran) saw a IMAX movie - "red flag air to air plane combat training".

We also went to the Yarra valley north east of melbourne and took the famous puffy billy steam train trip through a few small towns - it was a lot of fun to experience rail travel like they used to 100 years ago with a steam engine train.

כמה תמונות יפות מצידי הדרך