LAKES ENTRANCE, AUSTRALIA
We’re back on the mainland now, and we’ve decided to rent a Toyota Camry for the next month rather than flying from city to city. This of course will mean one heckuva lot of driving, because as you may already know, Australia is about the same size as the US, and we’re covering most of the east coast. Still, even with the ridiculous gas prices over here, it’s cheaper than flying.
Before starting our road trip yesterday, we stopped by the Melbourne Aquarium, which although not as big or well-known as the Sydney one, was still pretty interesting. (Of course I would think that, wouldn’t I?) What impressed me the most was the number of sea creatures from the Southern Ocean they had on display—not surprising, of course, but they really did have a lot of critters that I haven’t seen on exhibit anywhere else—weird elephant fish, old wives, giant cuttlefish, a huge maori wrasse, a blue-ringed octopus, and a number of strange Australian shark species. They also had a seven-meter giant squid “frozen in time,” which apparently means the same thing as "frozen in a block of ice."
We then drove east through the Gippsland region of Victoria to the beach resort town of Lakes Entrance. At one point while we were driving through some scrubland, I noticed something that looked like a spiny football by the side of the road, but I was driving too fast to really get a good look at it. A few miles later I saw another, and another, and then I slowed down enough to see that they were echidnas! (Echidnas are weird creatures that look like a big hedgehog, only they have a long snout like an anteater. They’re one of only two monotremes, or egg-laying mammals, in the world—the other is the platypus.) They were just shuffling around on the shoulder of the road, looking for food or something, but it was really cool to see them in the wild.
This morning Chris and I walked across the footbridge that spans the Cunningham Arme inlet to a nature walk that runs along Ninety Mile Beach. We didn’t see a whole lot, except for a large number of Australian black swans rooting around in the seagrass, some songbirds in the underbrush, and bluebottle jellyfish on the beach, but it was a nice walk anyway.
We’re back on the mainland now, and we’ve decided to rent a Toyota Camry for the next month rather than flying from city to city. This of course will mean one heckuva lot of driving, because as you may already know, Australia is about the same size as the US, and we’re covering most of the east coast. Still, even with the ridiculous gas prices over here, it’s cheaper than flying.
Before starting our road trip yesterday, we stopped by the Melbourne Aquarium, which although not as big or well-known as the Sydney one, was still pretty interesting. (Of course I would think that, wouldn’t I?) What impressed me the most was the number of sea creatures from the Southern Ocean they had on display—not surprising, of course, but they really did have a lot of critters that I haven’t seen on exhibit anywhere else—weird elephant fish, old wives, giant cuttlefish, a huge maori wrasse, a blue-ringed octopus, and a number of strange Australian shark species. They also had a seven-meter giant squid “frozen in time,” which apparently means the same thing as "frozen in a block of ice."
We then drove east through the Gippsland region of Victoria to the beach resort town of Lakes Entrance. At one point while we were driving through some scrubland, I noticed something that looked like a spiny football by the side of the road, but I was driving too fast to really get a good look at it. A few miles later I saw another, and another, and then I slowed down enough to see that they were echidnas! (Echidnas are weird creatures that look like a big hedgehog, only they have a long snout like an anteater. They’re one of only two monotremes, or egg-laying mammals, in the world—the other is the platypus.) They were just shuffling around on the shoulder of the road, looking for food or something, but it was really cool to see them in the wild.
This morning Chris and I walked across the footbridge that spans the Cunningham Arme inlet to a nature walk that runs along Ninety Mile Beach. We didn’t see a whole lot, except for a large number of Australian black swans rooting around in the seagrass, some songbirds in the underbrush, and bluebottle jellyfish on the beach, but it was a nice walk anyway.
posted by John Kuge at 10:57 PM
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