Sunday September 20, 2026
Fly 3:25 hours Cairns to Melboourne
September 21
We just went on a 4 hour walking tour of Melbourne. It is quite the city! I never thought that Melbourne would have 79 skyscrapers! An amazing city.
Sunny and cold- frost this morning. Moonlit Sanctuary is a large tract the animals roam free the humans are limited to paths. There are kangaroos, koalas, dingoes All kinds of animals!!
They have eight koalas . Koalas sleep 20 to 22 hours a day and eat 10% their body weight in eucalyptus leaves every day. The leaves are mostly water and they do not come down to drink water ever. The native name “koala” means do not drink.
8:22 at night, just left the penguin parade!!!😊
It is amazing those little penguins (tiny about 8 to 12 inches tall), waddle a long ways upland a long way beside a lighted boardwalk! Philip Island penguin parade! An amazing place.
2500 people sitting on metal benches watching in 40 degree weather for penguins to come out of the water. Then we walked up boardwalks with the penguins marching right beside us up to their dens! So cute – cuteness overload!! They are less than a foot tall and waddle on their two feet. Amazing, and they completely ignored us as they marched on.
Guards made sure we did not take pictures of them marching.
Tuesday September 22, 2026
It is 4 AM here, I have reserved an Uber for 11 AM. We plan on doing a walk to the Immigration center to check it out. Then back to the hotel to get in the Uber which will take us to the airport for the 24 hour trek home.
It is amazing how many parallels there are between Australia and the US. Treatment of the indigenous people and a gold rush are two major ones I had never thought of. They found more gold in Australia than in California and Alaska combined!