Our Last Day

Day 59 was back in Melbourne.  Or was it 60 or 61? I can't remember exactly when the official measure of togetherness started and stopped.  The short synopsis of the day was that we hopped on the train, went downtown, stared up at some big and unusual buildings and said "Golly!" (with a Gomer Pyle inflection of course).  We also went to an aboriginal museum (more art than history, but a bit of both).  Aboriginal history tends to make you sad and make you feel guilty even when you are not Australian.  They definitely got a raw deal - more so than the Maori or even the Native Americans in my estimation.

As a team, I would say that we were a bit fatigued and melancholy.  We have a bit of sadness that the trip is over, but that is also offset by the excitement of getting home and seeing friends and family in the coming days and weeks.

We ended the day by going out to a semi-fancy dinner, but still one in our power alley at a restaurant called The Fitz, which served pulled pork sandwiches, pork ribs, and chicken tacos with a fancy twist.  It reminded us of our semi-regular Portland meals with Ed, Renee, Joe, and Irma (dubbed Party of Six or PO6).  So we named this version "Family of Four" of FOF.  It was an enjoyable evening of recounting the highs, lows, and notable moments of the trip and an overall good capper for the trip.

A running theme of the trip (ask my family) has been that I get mad if we don't eat all the expensive food that we have bought or ordered.  We applied my new algorithm of ordering n-1 entrees for the family where "n" is the number of Mortons.  It worked perfectly in this instance in part due to the delicious food.  Walter pointed out that the algorithm does not work too well if you go out to eat on your own (thus validating all of my math instruction on the trip).

This could be our final blog entry unless something exciting happens on the way home.  It has been fun to do and I hope you have enjoyed it.  It has been a good trip and now it is time to hand off the baton to some other family to explore the world and report back.  I am available for hire as a staff blogger.  My rates are reasonable, but I do have a few terms and conditions in my contract as negotiated by the bloggers union.  I need my daily ration of rum, my union-mandated nap time, and a disproportionate share of any snack foods.

On the steps of the Victoria Parliament lobbying for an extension of our visas...

 

 

Our train station was adjacent to the home field of the Collingwood Magpies, one of eight Melbourne area Australian Football League ("Footy") teams.  Yet another southern hemisphere game that we don't understand..

 

 

A passionate Magpie fan mixing it up with a passionate Carlton Blues fan...

 

 

Look away vegetarians and animal lovers!  Walter enjoying a kangaroo burger at lunch.  Note the beetroot (not to be confused with a mere beet) on the side.  My mission moving forward is to champion the beetroot as a condiment in America.  I need to start with Walter...

 

 

 
Bikes to rent "luggage cart style".  Melbourne one-ups Portland yet again...

 

 

Australian architects are either really good or really bad at geometry...

 

 
 

 

You can watch TV outside in comfy chairs at the equivalent of Pioneer Courthouse Square (again advantage Melbourne)...

Home Schooling - a teenager's perspective (by Lucas)

Well, I have achieved putting off writing a blog post to the last minute.  I am very skilled in the art of procrastination.  Since we skipped two months of school, we brought plenty of school work along.  This was the one down side of the trip.    Every time we do homework at least two people end up angry.  I haven't done the best job of keeping up so now I have a lot of stuff to do on the plane.  Here is what I have to do:

• Three math packets
• Complete a draft of a social studies paper
• A few Spanish "Duolingos"
• Some journaling about the trip
• Six reading logs
• and of course, watch several feature length movies

OK, so "not the best job" might be an understatement.  I definitely regret putting off school work, but I am not too worried.  I have also come up with a new name for the blog: "61 Days of Togetherness and Algebra".

The Great Ocean Road

All four of us wanted to see the Twelve Apostles sea stacks along the Great Ocean Road.  They are famous and iconic - more on that later.

We were down to the last two full days of our trip, which required moving into sprint mode.  The Twelve Apostles are lcoated a ways west of Melbourne.  The slow, scenic route along the Great Ocean Road takes 4+ hours. The quicker inland route still takes 3 hours.  We wanted to get there, see some stuff along the way, and get back all in one day. We have a Morton family term for this activity: "hiking in the car".

We struck a deal with the boys that we would get up early, so we would actually have some time to explore along the way.  Our plan was to take the Great Ocean Road there and then once our checklist was complete, make a beeline home along the inland route.  We left at 5:51 am and coincidently returned to our driveway at 5:51 pm for an honest half day of touring.  The day was windy, gray, and intermittently rainy - better to spend it in the car than in a tent or hunkered down in our Airbnb playing Wii.

Those tiny dots are boats and jet skis.  Even tinier dots that you might not see are pro surfers.  We stumbled into the Rip Curl pro surfing event at Bells Beach outside of Torquay.  We watched for a few minutes from a distant vantage point without paying the $25/person entry - the equivalent of watching college football from Tightwad Hill on the Berkeley campus...

"Aye, the seas were angry"...

We found koalas galore in the wild with a hint from a tourist office where we might find them.  Lucas and Walter were quite good at spotting them way up in the trees.  See if you can find them...

 

An easier, but less satisfying method is to look for our fellow tourists pointing their cameras up into trees...

Twelve Apostles and Three Mortons...

Another couple of shots of the rock formations...

 

The Twelve Apostles, the best kept secret in Victoria...

 

We could have used a red-bellied black snake, not to do actual harm, but to hasten a return to the tour bus...

 

 

Margaret doing a pose preferred by Chinese tourists.  Homage or mocking - you decide...

 

We found Rob's glasses!

I was storing them in a logical place - in the bag of Pineapple Lumps (a favorite New Zealand candy)...

 

 
The sad thing about this photo is that they aren't much dirtier than Walter's glasses..

 

 

The chocolate is now off, but there is still a lot of saliva on them.

Melbourne - Day 1

We made it to Melbourne early today.  We opted for a Airbnb in Melbourne which is the same approach we took in Sydney.  It has worked great for us to stay in a neighborhood apartment and get a little more of an insider's take on the city.  Maybe we will jump on to the Airbnb economy full board and rent out our house in Portland and stay in friends' basements from now on.

In Sydney, we went for the surfers' neighborhood in Bondi as you may recall.  Here in Melbourne, we are getting a different experience in the Collingwood neighborhood which is hip, arty, and a bit edgy.

Upon arrival, I got decked out in my edgy urban apparel of khaki shorts, souvenir New Zealand t-shirt, tube socks, and older Adidas (none of it worn ironically) and went out with Margaret and the boys to keep in real on the mean streets of Collingwood.  Collingswood has a little bit of East Burnside thing going on and it seemed extra cool due to its unfamiliarity.  Overall, it was very Portland-esque which should aid the re-entry transition in a few days.  My comparative analysis between East Portland and Collingwood:

• Wall murals / cool graffiti - advantage Melbourne
• Absence of ugly graffiti - advantage Portland
• Hipster bicyclist density - advantage Portland
• Vintage clothing stores - advantage Melbourne
• Microbrewery density - advantage Portland
• Food cart density - advantage Portland
• Lumbersexual density - advantage Portland
• General edginess - advantage Melbourne

Pretty much a toss-up.

Graffiti so fresh you can smell the VOCs (panorama of several shots at our corner)...

 

 

 
Wall mural large enough to require a scissor lift...

 

Old school art in the park...

 

These graffiti "artists" need to work on their game a bit...



 

One upping Portland.  "You've got streetcars.  That ain't nothing.  We've got streetcars on our roofs"...

 

 
 
 
 

Two for two

During the drive toward Melbourne today, Margaret successfully passed two separate breathalyzer tests (the first two of her life she points out).  They were administered about 100 km apart in routine holiday checks.  Lesson learned - don't start drinking in celebration of passing your breathalyzer!

Easter Backpacking

We wanted to get one more trip into the bush before our trip was over. 

Margaret got a recommendation from a local man that the beach at Benedore River in Croajingolong National Park was a good choice.  He did voice a cautionary word about both ticks and impending rain, but the beach with those risks still seemed like a good choice.

It was a nice easy 10 km walk through forest and heathlands.  The talk of rain turned out to just be talk.  Unlike most of our other trips, this one was very much off the beaten path.  The one moment of excitement during the walk in was our first sighting of a large black snake.  Naturally, large black snakes seek out the member of your party who is most freaked out by large black snakes.  Margaret was that person.  To its credit, the snake slithered off without incident.  Lucas saw another one on the way out, which reacted similarly.

We ended up at a beautiful, nearly deserted beach with just one other person camping there.  Later in the day, we met and chatted with another walker who was finishing up his goal of walking the entire Victoria coastline.

We opted to camp on the beach. It was a beautiful spot, comfortable, and sheltered from the wind.  We awoke to an absolutely beautiful Easter morning.  The boys did not buy our story that in Australia, the Easter kangaroo  hides packets of oatmeal which children then gather in their stuff sacks.

In the end: no rain, no ticks, no bites from red-bellied black snakes, no rogue waves, just a nice trip to a remote corner of Victoria.


Kangaroos along the road to the trailhead...

 

Margaret watching her step along the track...

 

 

 

Interesting patterns in the seaside rock...

 

 

Our campsite...

 

 
Mom whipping up some hearty fare for her boys...

 

Nice views on Easter morning...

 

 

 

 

Lucas absorbing information from a non-electronic source...