May 28th: Mountains and Missing Penguins

Day 55 (Day 30 in Australia)

(If you’ve been waiting patiently for the lyrebird update, it’s at the end of today’s post.)

We were up and out a little earlier today. After dropping Sophia off to meet a friend we headed out to the Dandedong Ranges. We stopped in a little town, 450 metres up, called Sassafras. Yet another pretty little town. It could not live here though as it is a very high fire risk. The rule up there is: if the alarm sounds, grab the photo album and get the hell out!

Exclusive women’s wear shop in a tiny mountain town


Exceptional tea shop

After lunch, we drove on to the Dandenong ranges and The Observatory at Mt Dandedong. Great views albeit very hazy.


Melbourne CBD from 40km away










Shortly after we got home, Carolyn took us back out to the St Kilda area of Melbourne. “Bayside”, as it is called. A Bohemian area when a lot of Australian celebrities live. We went to see the little penguins that live at the end of the St Kilda Ferry Pier. They are known in Australia as “Fairy penguins”. Unfortunately there is construction work on the pier be the bit we needed to see the penguins was closed off. Still, the sunsets were glorious.



No idea!

Push-me pull-you rhino




Julie in the sunset


Beer o’clock

We did see one penguin 

Popular pub The Esplanade, or “The Espy”

As disappointing as this was, we retired to a beachside bar and had a drink!

Back home it was time for tea. Carolyn made pie -again! The best pie ever!! With a bottle of wine from the company Phil works for. We were joined by Sophia who had just had her hair cut.


And that was it for the day. After all this time we have 2 days left. Shopping (etc) in Melbourne City tomorrow.

Lyrebird update from yesterday: towards the end of the day we were getting tired and a bit cold. Despite looking very carefully, thought we had missed the dingo but at the last minute he appeared and came up quite close. It didn’t look anywhere near as dangerous as we all know it is.

Walking towards the exit not long before closing time, we passed the enclosure for the lyrebird. I said we just had enough time for a quick look and we went it. We could hear it running through its vast repertoire of mimicry but we couldn’t see it.

Someone pointed it out to me, high in a tree. It was just a blob but I videoed it just to record the wonderful sounds it was making. Pleased as we were, we tried to find a better vantage point but failed. While doing so the lyrebird eventually flew/climbed down to the ground.

He started making all his sounds again and scratching in the dirt so now I recorded him with sound and vision. He kept it up for about 3 minutes before wandering into the undergrowth. 

A couple of American tourists came along and we started chatting. I told them what happened and showed them my two minute video (with the volume up). The lyrebird (I later learned his name was ‘Apollo’) heard this and came to investigate, very curious at hearing his own voice. 

Julie videod the whole encounter, which sadly I can’t post here as it’s 7 minutes long. (I’ll see if I can put it on Facebook later). He stood next to me all that time and even made a grab for my phone. It doesn’t sound that interesting in writing but it was as good, for me, as my echidna encounter in the Outback.

Here is a very inferior clip to give just a flavour…




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