Melbourne online+Happy New Years Eve!

I keep on repeating to myself (as a European who's used to live in crowded areas) that the biggest difference between Europe and Down Under is the space. One can see it directly: in 80% of the cases the houses are on one floor with huge gardens in front and in the back .
Melbourne with its 4 millions inhabitants stretches over 50 km, which also gives the people plenty of space. The city has the river Yarra (the ValleyYarra is famous for its wineries) passing trough and the ocean coast too. The center area has plenty of old buildings (most of them in art nouveau) scattered between modern skyscrapers. Some cute old trams are kept as well. Thanks to our great French-Australian hosts we visited several (completely) different (from shick and modern till alternative or covered with graffiti walls) suburbs:
- Camberwell, Fitzroy, South Yarra, Hawthorn

- Southbank, the area with modern architecture and sculptures

- the colourful beach houses at Brighton beach

- Williamstown (the historical Melbourne Harbour)

The Indian and Greek minorities living here are quiet big down under. The other day we had delicious dinner at one Indian place. The seafood is great and sooo fresh too. I eat every day watermelons and mangoes (grown in Australian sun of course). Some days ago all 4 of us bought new hats at the Victoria Market in Melbourne. Here when the sun comes out (we did not have more than 30 degrees in Victoria), it feels like burning...

Christmas-time+news from Phillip Island:-)

After some days being busy with food-shopping, cooking and present-unwrapping (the Australian style and with Aude, Russell (a real Australian from Melbourne:) and his family), the tourist programme continued with a day at Philipp Island (140km away from Melbourne).

The Island is famous as a place full with Australian wildlife. We visited the Koala Conservation Center, where one can see the koalas in their real environment, sleeping on an eukalyptus tree. The highlight was a koala eating leaves (as all the ones we saw till now were actually asleep)...In the afternoon a boat took us to the Sealion rocks, where a colony of 6000 sealions relax in the sun or play in the water. One could smell them from a km before already...

The day finished with the Pinguin Parade (a colony of 60 000 pinguins lives on the island), which starts every evening after sunset when the pinguin parents come back from a day of fishing to feed their little ones. We saw the smallest pinguin species in the world (around 30cm) waddling from the sea to their babies, who lives in holes/houses within the sand.

If we look tired on the pic abovee, its because it was 11pm already:)

Weather has been really changeable. We had some sun, clouds, showers and again sunshine within less than 12 hours. The sun feels like a big burning machine even at 9am when there is no wind at all. Should be the difference between Europe and Australia and the thickness of the ozon layer here.