Geelong / Melbourne, Australia – March 6

Australia coat of arms

Partly cloudy, 19 degrees, one spot of rain


What we were told would be a 30-40 minute tender transfer, turned out to be about right. By the time we met our group, boarded the tender and made our way to shore it was about 35 minutes. Although it may seem

tendering us safely to land

long it was very slick, with the time actually on the tender being 15 minutes.



The ride to Melbourne where 5 million people live, we were told would be 2 hours...it was about an hour. apparently we had little traffic due to it being a Friday of a long weekend...Australia’s Labour Day and no one was going INTO the city...it was a different

another tender and our ship in the distance

story going out of the city...about 2 hours.



The prospect of an 8 hour tour was less than appealing to us, but we thought we should see Melbourne. Initially, when the itinerary changed we were scheduled to dock in

canoe and sails

Melbourne and be here overnight. Nope, in the end things were so busy due to ships diverting from Asia, that we had to dock in Geelong a city of about 500000 outside of Melbourne.



The Melbourne museum was our first stop. This is a museum of natural history, plants, animals the European colonization of Australian and indigenous culture. Our visit was

indigenous art

self guided. Self guided isn’t great, because we don’t hear from a guide, but it is relaxed as we wander by ourselves, looking at exhibits and reading about them.



The most interesting thing about our visit was seeing small Australian animals... amphibians, reptiles, insects and a few birds. There was an area set up to mimic the

600 year old tree

Australian bush that housed the animals.



Next was lunch on our own. We were dropped at an area with many, many restaurants side by side....we had Italian.

Melbourne from the 88th floor

Our last stop for the day was the Eureka Skydeck. The Eureka Tower is a

so beautiful it doesn't look read

Melbourne skyscraper with an

can't remember what these are called

observation deck on the 88th floor. It wasn’t the best day to be looking-it was cloudy with a bit of rain, but we could see plenty. We had

Melbourne from waaaaay up

time for a beer up there.



Our drive back to Geelong took twice as long as our trip to

one last pint before heading back to the ship

Melbourne...long weekend, bumper to

beer from the top of the world

bumper...ugh.