I did it again!!! I went on another tourist bus trip.. guess I just don’t learn.. 🙂

This time we went to the Blue Dandenongs, a low mountain range just about an hour drive east of Melbourne. They tend to have a much cooler climate than Melbourne and apparently are known as a premium gardening district. It s also home to a temperate rainforest protected as a National Park. The bus driver kept talking about the Mountain Ash which is most dominant tree in this rainforest and could potentially be the largest (hardwood) trees on the planet.. there s no way to prove that though because all the old ones were cut down so the forest is pretty young.

I didn’t mention this in my last post, but there are some really weird animals here.. in Europe I am used to seeing pigeons, crows and in our garden even some rarer species, but here those animals seem to have mutated.. pigeons for example – or whatever they are called – are pink! (I think it are Galahs, but don’t quote me on that..) I don’t know for certain what the Australian version of the crow is, but I think they are black and white and not as annoying as ours..
There s a dozen more weird birds acting like pigeons, mostly some sort of cockatoo I guess. And at least one thing they are better at than pigeons: causing uproar! If a tourist is naive enough to feed one, all hell breaks lose.. and I don’ t know this for sure yet, but I am pretty sure that – like pigeons – these flying vermin also bomb spectators below with the unhealthy remains of their previous meal.

I was having dinner at a local restaurant next to the Yarra river yesterday and met a couple of very nice girls (I will explain.. ;)).. One of them was going to move to Sydney so they were having a last evening out.. actually, judging by the 3 bottles of wine on their table, I think it was more about getting drunk together one last time ..

I made the very hard decision last week to go on a tourist tour.. you know, one of those awful and boring organized trips where you get to sit in a bus most of the day and are occasionally allowed out, usually at the worst possible places, tactically chosen to let tourists take a picture of something utterly uninteresting, or in a labyrinth of shops selling the exact same things you found on your previous stop. I much prefer the way I did it in Norway: driving myself, alone, able to chose my own destination and stops. Sadly, if i want to see anything outside the city limits, this is giong to be the only way for me to do it.. God have mercy on my soul!!

Tried to go to the swimming pool today.. Saying it didn’t go very well would be a true understatement…

Going to the pool is a 30 minute walk to the northern district from my hotel at Southern Cross.. once I got to just a couple 100 meters from the pool, someone up there decided to open the floodgates.. the heavens opened and in mere seconds the road had become just an extension to the pool. The minute and a half it took me to get from the doorway I was sheltering in was enough to get me completely soaked! 🙁

In case you don’t know already: I am in Melbourne, Australia.. the country of the kangaroo, koala and apparently also the miniskirts…
Well.. that last might have got something to do with the fact that is spring here, and closing in on summer.. judging by the temperatures we have here already though, I doubt I still want to be here once summer really starts.