Melbourne 6d5n Road Trip : Get in touch with the Nature of Melbourne

The second day in Melbourne, checking out from the lovely host of stay

We continue headed to our next destination - The Puffing Billy

It took 1 hours and 30 mins drive from Philip Island to reach here.

We have bought the train ticket via online and it cost around RM183 per person
The things that made Puffing Billy become a famous tourist spot is just because the tourists are allowed to put their legs out of the train and hanging the legs freely outside of the train.

But somehow, there is an accident happened a month before we go.
A car crashed into the Puffing Billy train and caused a tourist lost his legs due to the crash.
That day onward, the government of the local has banned this culture of putting the legs out.

If we knew this matter before we go, we won't take Puffing Billy as part of our itinerary 

Banning the legs out has totally cause Puffing Billy lost a lot of tourists to come 

But I understood of what the govern concern, therefore, we just can accept this rule and moving on as we planned. The wasted part was, we were unable to enjoy putting the leg out during the journey.

The speed of the train is super slow, it took quite some time to reach a destination

You must plan well on the time if you are heading to next destination or else it might hard for you to rush back as their train speed is slow. 

If I would, I will spare the time out and explore the station of the train stopped.

There are several restaurants and bites for tourists to buy and shop when you reached. 

There is a part of the journey which is quite interesting

The wooden bridge
Can you imagine that the train is surrounded by the trees and matching the woods color with the wooden bridge,
soooo pretty.  

The price of the train ticket is too expensive for me and I can't put my leg out

It is not value for the money at all,

the whole journey I just sit inside the train and looking at the scenery and those houses.

Seems like the price of ticket is not match with the worth. 

We came back to the initial station where we departed since morning.

We had our lunch at station nearby and found a cozy cafe to take our lunch. 

My eggs benedict is delicious. 

After having our lunch, we drove 40 minutes further to Yara Valley

Yara Valley is a place that famous in vine plantation

A place that you will find many vineyards here and you don't even know which wine yard to enter.

I think vineyards is a must visit places if you visit Melbourne as the scenery is awesome.

The plantation of grape-bearing vines covered the entire of the hills 

You can imagine the wine production is huge at here.

There are many vineyard in Yara Valley as I said.

We chose Domaine Chandon wineries among the others as it considered famous in Yara Valley.

Red wine or White wine?

I picked the white wine, 

The wine cost penny, you have to pay for a glass of wine,

They provide wine testing for public too which charge AUD 45 per person

I dont think I am a good wine drinker, so a glass of wine is enough for me. 

By the way, it feels great when you are drinking the wine with the grape vine plantation as your view.

The wineries closes at 5pm, make sure you reach earlier or else you have to drink with rush as they busy preparing to close. 

We have late check in on this day after we had our wine sipping at Domaine Chandon, 

But thank god that we found the home stay before the sky turn dark.
It is quite hard to find the location of the home stay as there is no signboard provided and any remarkable logo to remember.
But somehow, 

This is the best home stay among the all in my Melbourne Trip.

For more info about this homestay, check my itinerary at here.
The home stay is located within Yara Valley,
If you plan to visit vineyard at Yara Valley, you can consider about this property.
It is not matter about new or modern, this home stay is cozy cottage house,
the main reason I satisfied was the facilities, the toiletries and the full kitchen equipment

Of course, the house is super clean too. 

I enjoy cooking very much at overseas, especially winter time or cool weather.

This house, the host provide everything in the kitchen that I felt impressed. 

That's why, a chef always praise the kitchen with full equipment instead of nice design. 

We went to the nearest town to buy ingredients for dinner

It is not far from our stay, around 10 minutes drive either.

The dinner for second day. 

The next day morning, we checked out early in the morning and headed to our next destination

Mt Buller

We stopped by at a town along the journey and captured this picture. 

We drove 2 hours and 30 minutes to reach Mt Buller,

It is not the right time to come up here as no snow at all,

we saw some misleading info from the website and end up we wasted a day at here

but anyhow, the scenery is awesome still.

It was like a dead city, no one at here except the people who operates business 

or manage the place stay here. 

The weather is cool but not as cool as Philip Islands. 

We had our lunch at this peaceful place and seriously, my mind never felt so peaceful until I reached here. The main reason is there is not much population at here and it is super quiet.

But thank god that the cafe still open else we were going to starve for the whole afternoon. 

We drove another 3 hours and 30 minutes drive back to Melbourne City in the evening. 

The lesson learned about Mt Buller was, never come here during other season except for winter season. 

Stay tuned for the next post in Melbourne City.

Melbourne 6d5n Road Trip : Greeting Animals at Maru Koala Park and Philip Island

Once three of us had touched down at Melbourne Airport,

we headed to Avis Car Rental Shop which located outside of the airport for collecting the car

We had pre booked the car via online before we came here

6 days of car rental cost RM 600 excluding toll fees.

After getting our car, we headed to the destination that my friend had schedule out.

Maru Koala and Animal Park

The park is located at outskirt of Melbourne City, Grantville

It takes 2 hours drive to reach the park.

It is recommend to come in earlier morning rather than noon as those tour buses and tour groups came at noon time and create a crowded ambiance.  

We reached at the park around 11am and it was not crowded at all yet.

The admission fees of the park is AUD 20.

It was quite excited to experience a closer distance with the kangaroos 

especially this was my first time meet them in reality by face to face, lol

They are kinda cool and lazy of course, 

they don’t bother humans and if you have food on your hand, 

they definitely will come to you for sure. Well, animals, lol.

The kangaroo are hoping freely at the big field with one another

The another species of goat we called as “Cao Ni Ma”

is living peacefully with the kangaroo too.

We are also allowed to enter their area and feed them with food selling at the counter.

We are able allow to touch and take picture with them too. 

Honestly, I am quite excited when I was going to touch its forehead,

I just afraid it will hop away or bump into me if I touched it.

Nevertheless, it never refuse to let me touch. 

It seems like its hobby is eat and eat, just like my house pet Bobby. LOL

I cant stop myself to get close to them

just because they are soooooo cute.

 They are quite tall too when they stand straight.

It was asking for food from the little boy.

I forgot the name of this little creature

but it looks like kind of rats body mix with pig face

It looks cute but it will bite human,

that's why we cant near to it and it is not opened for public, unlike kangaroo. 

The Koala Bear is quite adorable too

but I m quite surprised that they were more lazier in reality.

There will be a photo session at certain time daily for the public to take picture with it.

The staff brought a koala come in to the photo taking area

and that koala refused to work and the staff had to change another koala for photo taking.

The another koala repeated the same behavior, 

it keep finding the door to get out,

the staff had no choice and changed another koala again XD

Finally, that's the koala that willing to take picture today

but it seems focus on eating the leaves more.

I cant express its cuteness but the way it tear the leaf was so adorable!

It just totally same like Panda Bear.

We had our lunch inside the park,

the price of the food is almost same as those restaurants in the city,

It is normal to me by now, but the first day landed in Melbourne and looking at such price might need a longer time to make decision whether to eat or not as I keep convert the price to Malaysia Ringgit.

After lunch, we continued to drive about 20 mins distance to reach the first home stay we had in Melbourne,  the home stay is super near to the spot attraction of penguin parade at Phillip Island.

For more info, you can check back the home stay detail via my itinerary post
http://osakajoan.blogspot.com/2018/06/melbourne-6d5n-road-trip-april.html

The house is super clean, basically I cant find any dust in this house

and the host is super duper friendly that they can share a lot of stories about Melbourne to 3 of us. 

They do provide heater in the bed, the existence of heater did make me sleep easily as the whether at Phillip Island is quite cold compare to Melbourne City

The penguin parade starts at evening everyday

We thought we reached quite early but somehow we were late in fact when we saw majority of  "good seats" have been took place. 

The attraction of this penguin parade is a natural activity that taken by a group of small size penguins coming up to the shore from the sea and go back to their shelter group by group. 

Since the location is by the beach, 

My face was almost freeze by the low temperature and the strong wind at here. 

I believe others are suffering the same like me,

it was so cold and you cant leave your seat or else it might taken by others.

All you can do is sit and wait and suffered the cold. 

The Penguin Parade Entrance fee cost RM160 per person, 

I didn't take any photo as they don't allow tourist to take picture on the penguins

There will be few supervisors watching us and they will warned you if you take picture on them

Honestly, I don't think penguin parade is a value for money ticket,

You just watch the penguins walked back to their shelter and you don't even see where their shelter is.

You just can see the penguins walking pass by the tourist spot. That's all. =.=

We had our light dinner after the parade ended, around 9pm

We bought mushroom can and breads from the supermarket at the evening

while the host provide us a cube of butter.

taaaadaaaaaa

Nice yet warm dinner to me for the first day in Melbourne before I go to bed. 

Stay tuned at my blog for the following days in Melbourne.

I believe more photos will be uploaded.