Day 52: Ferry to Geelong to Melbourne

We arrived in Geelong on the ferry before sunrise. Based on our experience a month earlier, we immediately drove up to the car park between the botanical gardens and the foreshore, where we could park for free for as long as we wished. We ate our second breakfast there (we had muesli bars before leaving our cabin at 6.30 am) and enjoyed savouring the sunrise over the ocean.

We had two goals for this day: go to the National Wool Museum in Geelong and drive to a caravan park in north Melbourne. It took us much of the day to get this done! 

Foreshore of Geelong. We walked
along this former pier.

The Wool Museum didn't open until 10, which is a long time to wait when you've been up since 5.45! We wandered through the botanical gardens and then along the foreshore, out on a jetty and finally arrived outside the museum at 9.45 where we ate some morning tea.

Scarlet-star, of the bromeliad family.
Native to north and south America

The museum was worth visiting. We learnt about the history of the area as well as more about the wool industry. Australia was a wealthy nation from pretty early on in its history, mostly due to wool, an industry that remained a major part of our economy for almost 200 years. Sheep arrived with the first fleet, but less than 10 years after the first white settlers landed on the continent sheep were imported with the goal of developing a wool industry. I had no idea that Australia had once had natural grasslands. I'd always assumed that trees covered the land until they were cut down by immigrants. In any case, the museum told us that the native grasslands were largely destroyed by sheep and there is little left now.

The main reason wool was a great industry for this new nation was because it didn't degrade with time—it took months to get produce to the "motherland". Of course they had to develop sheep that would cope with Australian conditions and succeeded in that endeavour very well.

Geelong is where my mother was born (her family moved to Queensland before she was school aged). Apparently for many years the city was known as the wool centre of the world. It was a fascinating couple of hours we spent in the museum. The blue-stone building itself is historical. It was built in 1872 as a wool store.

On the top floor we happened upon the Wildlife Photographer of the Year photo exhibition on loan from the Natural History Museum London. It was astounding. I had to stop reading after a while (all the photos had good stories with them) as I was running out of energy prior to lunch.

We walked back to the motorhome, ate lunch, and headed to Melbourne, stopping along the way for some groceries.

Greenhouse at Geelong botanical gardens

A False African Violet. Native to
Tanzania

The biggest stress of the day came late. We were booked to do a tour of the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground, an internationally famous stadium) the next day, but had to figure out how to get there and it wasn't easy. Public transport is hard for visitors, I wonder why cities don't work harder to make it more accessible. After visiting several Australian cities this year, my favourite is Sydney, where you are allowed to use your credit card as a "transit card" and don't have to pay extra for a card you're only going to use for a short time. The complexities didn't just include where we could get on and off, we had to figure out where we could by a local transit card on a Saturday morning and on our way to the train stations and buses replacing trains on the weekend.

We were thankful for another place to lay our heads (though it was the most expensive place that we slept in the motorhome in our whole journey). I was a little bit discombobulated by the loud local radio playing in the ammenities block, though. We'd definitely landed in AFL (Aussie Rules football) territory. The radio broadcast that night from a live game at the MCG was just a taste of what was to come the next day.

You find weird plants in botanical gardens. This
one is an Arizona cypress?

Museum

This internal blue-stone wall in
the museum has been restored.

An exhibit of various sheep breeds. These were real
sheep with names that had been expertly taxodermied.