Back to Up Over

So the past eight days were spent chillaxing in St. Kilda.  Some days I went into town to see some attractions: the Australian Center for the Moving Image, The Immigration Museum, various souvenir shops, or to meet up (briefly) with Jenn, Steph, Linda, and Brendan.  The rest of the time I was either reading and doing Sudoku at the beach with some new international friends, going for a run, walking around taking photos, sketching in the park, or waiting for penguins to emerge from the rocks at the end of St. Kilda Pier.  All-in-all it was a pretty fulfilling end to my trip.  I even had time to fit in a couple yoga sessions, which is something I'd been wanting to try for a few years now. An American girl I met (there were only three Americans among hundreds at the hostel) told me she had been going to a yoga place nearby and I agreed to go one morning.  It was bikrum yoga, which means they basically lock you in a room for 90 minutes, turn up the heat to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and proceed to demand that you mimic a series of increasingly absurd and painful postures and hold them.  The result, besides a massive sweat pool on your yoga mat and the feeling you've been runover by a herd of camels and left to die in the Serengheti, is unbelievable muscular soreness for about a week.  Anyway, I highly recommend it! 

Female Bowerbird

So, though I met a great number of interesting and hilarious characters from all over the globe during my stay at X Base Backpackers, I have to say I was ready to leave it this morning when I took a cab to the bus depot at five this morning.  Staying in a hostel that long really allows you to get a feel for the neighborhood and to get to know a few of the other residents pretty well and hear their stories, etc., that you really can't do if you're switching hostels every other day.  So that was cool.  On the other hand, if you stay long enough, there's always a new crowd coming in and going out, and eventually you find you don't know anybody anymore (what I came to realize last night.)  So instead of trying to meet the new group on my ultimate day in Melbourne, I walked around downtown for a bit, came back, made dinner, and then sat out at the pier for a few hours as it got dark.  I watched the orange sun fade into gray and charcoal as dusk settled in and the shower of the surf was blown over the rock jetty to the leeward side, where a growing number of people gathered, squinting for the first stirrings of the penguins.  I did manage to see a couple baby penguins waddle out onto the dock, before they got scared by some careless photographer hawking for a good shot.  I also saw a few native water rats, which look like miature otters with a white tip on their tail.  They're pretty entertaining, and just like otters, scamper along the shore and then plunge in again to serpent about expertly through the water, foraging for tiny crustaceans and fish.

gulls and luna park in St. Kilda

Anyway, what with the four alarms I set, I managed to get myself, and a couple bunkmates up at a quarter of five this morning, in time to get my taxi, bus, and plane to Brisbane, where I am now typing this on the Duggan's computer amidst the sound of rain that has just begun to patter on the roof over head.  It is muggy and warm and it really makes me eager to spend Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere, where the only reason to be sweaty is if you're standing too close to the fire.  So tomorrow I leave early in the morning, once again, to fly to Sydney, then Los Angeles, then Atlanta, and then finally home, where I will arrive at 6:15pm, on the same day I left, though something like 30 hours will have elapsed.  Now that's a long day.  Nonetheless, despite the Duggan's great hospitality in putting me up another night and transporting me from the airport, I am looking forward to being home after a 13 week adventure that has shown me a great part of the human, environmental, and ecological diversity this great country has to offer.  It seems like I have been gone for at least twice as long as I really have, and though I will miss the people and places I have visited, I am sure to venture down to the southern continent at some point in the future.  But for now, it's back home to North America, to that cold, welcome winter weather.  See you there!

Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda

Matt

Theater, Luna Park, and Lorikeets

St. Kilda Beach

The Board Walk

St. Kilda Pier

kite surfers and the skyline

me, sunset, on the pier

two fairy penguins

sunset

curious penguin

two baby penguins and a kid's shoe

Melbourne skyline at night

St. Kilda and spooky tree

the bus station at 5:15am