In The Heart Of Austral Winter
Having just passed the equinox down south we’ve tempered our traveling a bit, but some local sights and a welcome visitor kept us on our feet.
As is wont to happen in these darkening days, the temperatures have been slowly dropping and our rangings have become a little more limited. So I guess that is to say, this will be a short and sweet update from way down south. Even the most ambitious of adventuring appetites will be a bit tempered by the darkest days of the year, even if winter in Victoria has proven to be enjoyably mild. As such Meredith and I have been contenting ourselves with explorations around the city and day trips into the nearby countryside.
Recently, our sight seeking spirits took us south out to the coast proper to the properly well-recommended Phillip Island. It may only sit an hour south of town but this little surfer’s paradise felt a world away from the big city, if only I’d brought my board. Spanning the mouth of Western Port Bay this rolling island is a staple escape for Melbournians with miles of open beach along the Bass Strait supplying plenty of surf and natural escapism year round. As we drove past all the shuttered baches dotting the coastline it was pretty clear that we weren’t exactly visiting in high season; no worries though, we came not to dive into the ocean but for the splendor it provides. We made our way out to the remote Nobbies Nature preserve where we were treated to a splendid walk along sea cliffs overlooking the strait keeping a keen eye out all the while for whales. June is whale season after all. And our efforts did not go unrewarded! Humpbacks were splashing about out in the waves, while to our backs little blue penguins nestled in their burrows in the scrub atop the cliffs. We capped it all off with a round of mini golf on the way home to mark a day trip well taken.
Just last week we were graced by our first (and likely only) visitor here in Aus, Meredith’s sister Davis! Sure, she lives in Brisbane so a long weekend trip is a bit more feasible, but credit where credit is due and we were glad for the company. After all, we had some town to show off. It was just a 3 day trip, so we packed in as much of Melbourne’s fine food and beverage scene as we could. From our favorite curry shop down the street, to some of the finest fancy-pants Asian-fushion in town, Davis loves a good bite and we love to facilitate. We also slipped out of town to explore some of the countryside. Just to make sure we saw all the classic Aussie creatures we visited the Healesville Animal Sanctuary and paid a visit to the koalas (easily photographable), emus (also easy to capture), platypuses (nearly impossible to take a picture of) and Tassie devils (too shy to be seen even in a sanctuary). Of course it didn’t go unnoticed that Healesville sits squarely in the middle of the nearby Yarra Valley wine region, so you know lunch at a scenic cellar door was in order. It may have been a quick and casual visit but it was great to have company and even more of a reason to play tourist in our own town.
Our time here in Australia is running in nearly panic-inducing short supply; in just a couple months we’ll be bags packed and headed off onto our next adventure. It really has been a rigorous exercise to stay present and enjoy our remaining time down south with so much uncertainty on the horizon. Currently, we’re in a hot debate over whether we want to move winter to winter and head back to Colorado in September or wait out the winter months with a cheeky long stopover in Hawaii on our way home. If you have an argument one way or the other we’d love to hear it.
Our Route:
All Seasons All Days
It never really feels like winter here in Victoria, but it also never really feels like not winter either.
Here I sit on a chilly June evening pondering my place in the world and feeling pretty satisfied all told.
I’d lie if I said our transition to the mainland had been as seamless as our past moves have tended to be. Something about the combination of a big expensive city, and a wariness of the ‘move every 6 moths’ life style isn’t exactly conducive to feeling very centered. Funny thing, that. But with time all places can become home and now, nearly halfway through our time in Melbourne Meredith and I are starting to really feel settled here in this sprawling city.
We’re starting to feel fully ingratiated at work, we’ve been slowly cultivating groups of friends to head to to drinks (or recently, off to an escape room) with, and we’ve got our schedules blessedly synched up allowing for some much needed off time to explore both this great city and the ever surprising Victorian countryside.
Around town, predictably, we’ve filled our time with a series of world-class art exhibits and unforgettable meals out. Not bad for life at the bottom of the world. Turns out when people say Melbourne is a bit of a cultural capital they aren’t deluded by the lack of competing cities (Sydney aside) within a 2,000 mile radius. There’s legitimately a lot to do here down south. With dozens of large event venues, and endless string of museums, heaps of sports teams our list of things to do seems to be growing faster than we can check things off.
But you know we haven’t been just killing time around town. There’s plenty of nature to explore at the city’s doorstep and beyond, and our restless bones are constantly called into the “wintry” hills. With the impending arrival of winter I took the opportunity for one last snow-free trip up into the high country to get some riding in up on the ski mountains before they close for the mud season, as well as to explore the aptly named Cathedral Ranges.
For as sprawling and flat as this city can often feel it is pretty remarkable how close at hand some seriously rugged bush really is. Just up past the rolling, vine-covered hills of the Yarra Valley rise the scraggy peaks of the Cathedral Ranges, barely a stone’s throw away by Australian standards. What was most striking about the visit to the area though is just how jungly the country can get. Sure there’s plenty of dry podocarp forest about of the type we saw plenty of in Tassie, but turn the right corner to a more southerly exposure and you’ll find yourself in a fern-laden jungle. It’s a good state of affairs for my New Zealand starved soul.
Most recently though, Mere and I lined a couple of days off together and struck south by south west (ha) along the famed Great Ocean Road. This famous drive wraps through the national park that covers the far southern tip of the Australian mainland. The Otway national park preserves some of Australia’s oldest rainforest while various marine parks protect the wild waters of the southern ocean. Only a bare few townships lie amongst the winding turns of the rugged coastline. Naturally, this area of pristine natural beauty is an insane tourist hotspot…during the summer months. Fortunately for us, we’re not scared of a little wild weather and headed out well off of tourist season. Victorians love to brag about the unpredictability of the weather that the Southern Ocean serves up; while Colorado would like to have a word about their notion of unpredictable weather it is certainly true that you have to be ready for four seasons of weather in a day when you head out into the southern winter.
All this wild weather had the effect of positively draining the towns of their usual tourism bustle, which suited us just fine, being a pair who prefer solitude and self-made adventure. It was a positive treat to get to drive along this wild coast watching towering waves crash against the cliffs below as we (unsuccessfully) scoured the trees for any koalas who may be living above. But of course there was a destination in mind for this escapade, the famed Twelve Apostles. You almost certainly have seen photos of these iconic sea cliffs with 12 spires (now more like 8) rising from the sea. As you may expect the area is typically overrun with coaches and camper vans, but rolling up on a windy June morning found us alone looking over one of Australia’s most beautiful vistas. Sometimes tourist traps really are worth the hype and the view of morning light glinting off the Apostles with a rainbow arching off over the ocean beyond truly was a sight to behold.
We'll have to get out and find some more of these incredible Aussie sights no matter what the winter decides to throw our way.
A Whole Lotta Country
It’s taken a bit of time, but we’re settled down here in Melbourne and beginning to see just what the mainland has to offer.
Well that was a bit of an extended break! The move to Melbourne has proved to be our most challenging yet, and the big city has kept us properly hopping since we’ve arrived. But now, a month in, Meredith and I are finally settling into our new place and jobs here in the Big Smoke and I have a little time to breathe.
It started much as our move to Wellington did by loading all of our worldly possessions into (and onto) the car and bidding a fond farewell to our Taswegian roommates (who’ll be sorely missed) then caught the aptly named Spirit of Tasmania, the ferry that connects Tassie to the mainland. Unlike the brief 4 hour jaunt between New Zealand’s islands the trip to mainland Aus is a bit more involved, and best done at night. The 10 trip across the Bass Strait offers little of the scenery that the Cook Strait has in spades, so we dove on and dozed our way across to awake to a brand new day in a brand new city.
Melbourne. What to say about this sprawling southerly metropolis? Well let’s start with the basics, it’s a city of nearly 6 million people (so think Atlanta) surrounding the shores of Port Phillip on the southern tip of Victoria. The city lies astride the Yarra River, but that may be to give to much credit to a river that wasn’t much more than a convenient dredge point near the harbor and a few miles up river looks more like the Platte than any major body of water. While Sydney is more populous Melbourne constantly prides itself as being the cultural capital of Australia. And it provides to back up the claim. Theaters, museums of every stripe, sports arenas, and historic buildings fill the far-flung suburbs. And flung they are indeed, you can easily drive two hours around the harbor and still be “in Melbourne”.
“Every cafe is definitely, certainly, unquestionably serves the best coffee in town.”
Meredith and I have settled in the ultra-convenient, excessively-hip Fitzroy neighborhood which lies just north of the city center. Here every street is lined with tempting restaurants of all colors, every alley is covered in street art, and every cafe definitely, certainly, unquestionably serves the best coffee in town (no need to try the place next door right?!). We’re loving the area for it’s convenient location to so many interesting parts of town, handy cycling infrastructure, cute architecture (historic townhouses, no big apartment blocks here!), and overwhelming amount of food and bev options. I, handily, took a job at Summit Cycles located not a 5 minute ride from our new place, and the premier mountain bike shop in the city. It was actually a surprisingly tough decision because if there’s one thing Melburnians love, it’s their bikes. I had to compare a dizzying number of shops. But in the end I had to go with the MTB shop, because who better to ride with right?
It’s a good thing too, given that most of my traveling since we’ve come to town has been cycling centric. I blew through the local trail networks pretty quickly (being such a large city there’s not much close at hand), and recently turned my sights on Victoria’s alpine region (or as they call it Alpine Shire, cute). That’s right, 3 hours from Melbourne I can even be tempted with a little skiing. And where there’s skiing (in the summer at least) there’s mountain biking to be done.
“I was not feeling too optimistic about these so called “mountains”.”
My most recent trip started with a couple days up at Mt. Buller (the closest hill to Melbs) with the shop crew. After driving through rolling, dusty countryside for several hours I was not feeling too optimistic about these so called “mountains”. But sure, enough if you wind your way far enough into the countryside the terrain starts to climb and the flora begins to change. Buller is a rocky peak most well known for it’s quirky inverted village, all the buildings are at the top and you ski down from there! Oh, the things you can do when your hills top out at 5,000 feet.
“It was two hours of dopamine-fueled driving.”
From Buller I headed even further afield to the nexus of Victorian mountain biking, and the alpine region in general, the picturesque mountain town of Bright. Rolling in, with the autumn leaves a-turning felt so much like coming home. It’s funny how it seems no matter where I journey a mountain town always hits that home button in my brain. A day of riding the park in Bright and I headed over the pass to the impossibly even cuter (and suitably named) Mount Beauty, the gem of Victoria’s Alpine Shire. Camped up in a fern-laden gully with a drizzle pitter-pattering on top of my car and waking up to a grassy vale filled with low-hanging clouds had me felling like I was back in New Zealand. After an epic morning on the bike my sense of adventure told me to head higher into the hills to find a back way home. What came next was arguably the best scenic route I’ve ever driven in my life. From Mt Beauty the winding road climbs through lush eucalypt forest to the resort Falls Creek before heading off into some truly wild country. With shining sun, rolling banks of clouds, smooth roads, and a vast forest stretching in all directions I was treated to two hours of dopamine-fueled driving.
Yeah, I think I can get used to all this country.