Australia Melbourne Tour Nov 2011
Australia Melbourne Tour (7 Nov – 12 Nov 2011)7 Nov 2011 (Singapore – Melbourne)
- reached Changi Airport Terminal 3 at 7pm and had our dinner at the Wang’s café. Took SQ227, departed at 2115h and the journey took around 6.5h, reaching Melbourne airport at 3.45am Singapore time, 6.45am Melbourne. Had dinner and light breakfast on board. Watched 2 movies (Smurfs and Return of the planet of apes) and then slept. And for the record, I experienced the worst air turbulence during this flight; it’s like taking a roller coaster ride!
8 Nov 2011 (Melbourne – Victoria)
There are a total of 14 of us: 4 of us, a pair of female old friends, 2 pair of couples (one young one middle age) and a family of 4 (an old couple, their daughter and their granddaughter). We met our driver Ross at the airport, and we went to Victoria market. It is like a huge pasar-malam with many different sections ranging from vegs and fruits to souvenir and clothings. We then proceed on to our farmstay, where we are all divided into 3 different farms. From the iternary, it seems like ours is the smallest farm.
The farm Capricorn Cottage is 50 minutes drive from the meeting point. We were greeted by our host Peter Greenfields, who drove us there where we met his wife Brenda Leed. It is a cosy farm which houses lots of goats (predominantly a goat farm), 4 dogs, 3 cats and 2 minature horses. The address: 531, Emu Creek Road, Victoria.
A little history about the farm and its owners, which I learnt eventually. It all began 2 years ago when they have retired and decided to have a farm. A rather busy lifestyle at the farm actually – they have to milk the goats 2x /day, feed them 3 times a day (4x for the younger goats), deliver the baby goats, make cheese and soaps all of the diary products, they do some plantings as well, and takes care of their own cooking. Yup, Brenda cooks for all our meals and they are very decent and tasty. For lunch: we had sandwiches and tomato soup, She also prepared beef rolls, only to realize later that we don’t take beefs… For tea, we had pancakes with spreads of oranges, honey etc which they made themselves. And for dinner, we had roast chicken and pork.
The farm was featured in one of their newspapers in Victoria, and we learnt that Peter used to be a prison officer, while Brenda makes dresses. They have 5 children and 10 grandchildren who don’t stay with them, and they are both 61 years old. It is truly impressive and amazing how much passion they have for the farm and certainly doesn’t feel like retirement, but I guess all that matters is you enjoy what you are doing, together.
In the afternoon after our lunch, we had a tour to their farm, and had a chance to feed the goats. Though this is my second time at a farmstay, feeding the goat is a totally new experience. Nonetheless, this probably won’t be the kind of retirement life I am looking for, because fun aside, to spend the rest of the life maintaining a farm is kind of tiring, and I can’t really stand the smell for long.
After this, Peter drove us downtown to the city of Bendigo, which is around 15 mins drive. A rather peaceful and relaxing place with few people walking around. We visited the old buildings, the Dragon museum and a short walk down the creek.
We turn in quite early at around 9 pm, after all, we didn’t really sleep much for the past 24 hours.
9 Nov 2011 (Victoria – Melbourne)
We woke up at around 6.45am to wash up. Had our breakfast – bacon and eggs and bread, and cereal. Took some photos and left the farm at 8.45am. It was rainy today. Next was a long 2 hour drive to Mornington Peninsula towards our first destination: the lavender gardens and Ashcombe maze and settled our lunch there and the rain stopped when we reached luckily. We had roast chicken, pumpkin soup and ice-cream desert. Even the ice-cream is lavender-flavored. A quick tour around the place, took some pics and then set off to the next destination.
Next stop is the Sunny ridge strawberry farm. As the name implies, it was bright and sunny over here and we were given the opportunity to pick strawberry in the strawberry farm and got them back! Also had a taste of the strawberry ice-cream.
Last stop was wine-tasting. Nothing too spectacular. After this, we proceed on a 1.5h drive back to Melbourne and our hotel. We stayed in Rendevous Hotel along Flinders Street which overlooks the Yarra river. Our rooms are 821 and 826. We went for a short walk in search for dinner, and finally ate at Hungry Jacks, which serves tasty tendercrisp burger and also most importantly, they have free wifi!
10 Nov 2011 (Melbourne – Philip Island)
We woke up at 6.50am, had the complementary breakfast at basement 1, The Grill, which comprises the typical western breakfast of egg, bacon, cereal, etc. We then set off at 9 am to Philip Island, which is a 2h drive from Melbourne city.
Our first stop is the chocolate factory, where we had a glimpse of how chocolate over there is made and tasted freshly made chocolate. Bought some from them, which I thought was rather expensive.
Next stop was to a subset of Philip Island, called Churchill Island, which contained a farm of horses, chickens, goats, peacocks, etc. We had our lunch there first – some dry chicken, lemon fish (also dry looking) and lamb sausage, wedges and salad. We are supposed to watch some live demonstration of feeding goats, etc but decided to give it a miss since we had our fair share of farm-stay earlier on.
We moved on to the Koala conservation centre, and saw some koalas on the tree. Apparently they sleep 16 hrs a day and spend most of their times on the trees. Quite a sedentary lifestyle they have. Unfortunately, we were not able to hug the koalas to take pictures now.
After this was a visit to the nobbies centre, which houses the Australian fur seals. It was very windy and cold over here, and unfortunately, we were not able to catch any seals. Nonetheless, there were a lot of sea gulls. Got some souvenirs from the gift shops.
Next was dinner time. But between the last stop and dinner was a 1 h wait and zuobo. Some problem with time schedule there, ain’t it? Anyway, it was still very windy and cold, so we spend most of the times at the supermarket called Foodworks in this small town before Philip Island, San Remo (Yup, we had to drive back to the entrance to have our dinner). Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant, which serves us rice, seaweed soup, fried chicken, steamed prawns, stirred fried vegetables, braised pork with fungus, steamed fish and oranges. Wasn’t too bad a meal, considering that we haven’t had Chinese food for a while.
Our last stop was the penguin parade. This is limited by time, as the penguins will only return back to shore for us to see at a stipulated time (a little history about penguins – they leave their homes early in the morning to hunt for food and will only return at dusk). The estimated time was 20.10h, though they came back only at 2028h today. These were tiny penguins, not those big ones from Antarctica. Anyway, it was once again a freezing experience!
We only managed to reach back to hotel at 10.30pm. We had some creamrolls and strawberries for supper before we turn in (and typed this).
11 Nov 2011 (Melbourne)
We woke up at 8am today for breakfast at the same place of the same type. It’s a free day for us, so it’s either we choose between the Great Ocean Road (need to pay extra 160 bucks), the Sovereign Hills (110 bucks) or tour around ourselves. We have decided to tour around the city of Melbourne.
We first took the city tram to the station nearer to the beginning of Collins Street. Managed to catch the one minute observance in the front of the old treasury building at 11am, which we later learnt that it was to commemorate the end of World War II when more than 60000 Australians were sacrificed. We visited their shopping malls (quite high end shopping around this region) and eventually walked towards Chinatown near Russell street. We had our lunch there – duck rice, and it was quite a huge plate which cost around 9 dollars.
Then we went to the Crown entertainment centre which houses their casino and designer’s stores. I bought 2 boxes of chocolates from there as well and we settled our dinner there at Lucky Chan Chinese/Cantonese restaurant. It is rather expensive and not very tasty. The food is spicy and the waiter actually missed our dish. Cost 140 dollars in all. I will not recommend it.
We also walked along the Yarra river and explored the Southgate, where they have the pubs, like the concept of Clarke quay in Singapore.
Went back to hotel at around 8 pm, watched Mentalist and Copycat before sleep.
12 Nov 2011 (Melbourne – Singapore)
We woke up at 7am, had the same breakfast and saw the same people. Checked out at 11am, reached airport
