The Last Supper...

Since the Turnbull's were leaving for a LONG flight on Saturday, we decided to head to The Great Ocean Road and see the Twelve Apostles.  When you book a tour, they tell you that you will be gone for at least 12 hours...while we weren't gone for quite that long, it was pretty close.

Entrance to The Great Ocean Road.  There are houses on the Great Ocean
Road...we think that would be a pretty cool address.

Melbourne is about 2 hours from the start of The Great Ocean Road, so we headed out early, in hopes of beating some of the tour bus traffic and to be able to stop at Bell's Beach, where the Rip Curl Surfing Championship occurred over Easter Weekend.  Bell's Beach is a known surfer's paradise, and the waves were rolling in on Friday - not quite as big as they were at the Forrest Caves, but good looking waves, nonetheless.

There is a 35km Surf Coast Walk that goes past Bell's Beach.

Bell's Beach - site of the Rip Curl Surfing Championship
over Easter Weekend

Surfers at Bell's Beach.

WE SAW A KANGAROO.  and a big one, too!  As we were headed for Lorne, there he was, just a hopping along in the marsh area...Jeffie spotted him - he has great wildlife spotting eyes.

He's just above the center of the picture, hopping.  So cool.

We then hit The Great Ocean Road, through Lorne, stopping at Apollo Bay for lunch.  If you have any interest in coming to visit us, perhaps you'd like to run The Great Ocean Road Marathon - it goes from Lorne to Apollo Bay and is actually 27+ miles...you can stop at the 26.2 mile mark and they will transport you to Apollo Bay, should you choose :)  It is a beautiful road, lots of rolling hills, and plenty of ocean breezes!

It's hard to believe that the water is really that color.

View from a pull-off area.

After Apollo Bay, you are still on The Great Ocean Road, but you're not really on the ocean...at all - you may catch a glimpse of it in the trees, but you are pretty far from the beach.


As we were driving, we saw a sign for the Otway Lighthouse, and decided to stop and see what it was about...well, it was 13km off of the road, and cost a fortune, so we headed back to The Great Ocean Road.  BUT, the really cool thing was that on the way to the Otway Lighthouse, we passed by a group of koalas - in the wild - sleeping in trees...of course we had to get some photos!

He looks so cuddly and cute.  Minus the talons on his feet.

Koala tree - out in the wild!

After our koala adventure, we continued to the Twelve Apostles...and they did not disappoint.  The Twelve Apostles are really only Eight, but they are huge pillars of sandstone out in the ocean that have been whittled away over the years - they are beautiful.  We got there just before sunset, so the pictures don't show all of the colors, but I still think they are pretty cool.

We were excited to be out of the car and walking around...

Those lines in the bottom center of the picture are penguin tracks.  There
is a colony of penguins that live at the Twelve Apostles, and they are
relatively undisturbed because it is so hard to get down to the beach.

Hole in the rock - but don't climb out to see it up close...
see the last picture in the blog.

Bit hard to see with the sun setting, but several Apostles are here.

Away from the sunset - two more Apostles

You can see several Apostles here, or what remains of them.

Although there are only eight Apostles now, this sign shows how the
Apostles will be rebuilt, eventually.

Just in case you thought it a good idea to try to climb
one of the Apostles or climb down to the beach.

We headed home after the Eight Apostle viewing, and only beat the 12-hour bus tour by about 45 minutes!

Ned's Dead at the Old Melbourne Gaol

Tuesday night we went to hear some ghost stories at the Old Melbourne Gaols.  Jeff had been on a Watchman's Tour when the Field's came to visit, so we decided to switch it up and go with the ghost tour with the Turnbull's.

The story behind the Old Melbourne Gaols is pretty interesting, with hanging still happening until the 1960's (though by this point they were taking place inside, versus on the corner of the busy street), and there are lots of stories of ghosts living in the Gaols.  A little feedback for the Gaol, when the ghost tour guide repeatedly says things like "when Trevor, who doesn't believe in ghosts, wrote this tour ...", kinda kills the ghost tour mystique whether you believe in them or not.

Ned Kelly is by far the most infamous inmate which occupied a cell in this Gaol.  Despite being a cop-killing bushranger, he seems to carry the aura of a national hero.  His final capture occurred in a gun battle with the authorities in which he and three of his mates had assembled rudimentary "bullet-proof" armor.  His three mates perished in the battle, but he was captured alive and housed in the Melbourne Gaol before being put to death at the gallows.  His famous last words ... "Ah, well, I suppose it has come to this.  Such is life."  There are heaps of books and movies on this guy, I suppose we'll have to catch one to fully understand the folklore.

Try as we may, none of us captured any ghosts on our cameras.  I pretended that I was Ned Kelly, and Jeff scared some other tour-takers...he was standing in the "most haunted cell" (in a black coat and dark jeans - in the dark), and some young kids came into the cell thinking that there wasn't anyone in there, only there he was...Jeff gave them quite a scare!  They yelled and he laughed!

Preparing for the ghost tour in front of the Old Melbourne Gaol

Exterior of the Gaol

Inside the Gaol from the top of three floors.

Cells not very large.  Not sure Shaq could sleep in this thing.

The gallows.  That is the actual beam all 153 inmates
 put to death, 4 of them women, hanged from. 

There is an art to it.  The placement of the knot and the length of
 the rope ... obviously, both critical to a quick and clean execution.

The haunted cell where Jeff scared the pants of some unsuspecting visitors.

Ned Kelly

The armor Ned Kelly and his 3 mates wore in a shootout with the authorities.

Me as Ned Kelly

Holy moly!  Better send this one into the Gaol to add to their ghost picture collection.

Hail to the Cats

Easter Monday is a public holiday here, so after getting up to FaceTime with LT's family for Easter (good to see everyone!), we headed back to Melbourne and prepared for an afternoon at an Aussie rules football match.  After a week of picture perfect weather, ma and pa Turnbull began to doubt our whinging about the crazy weather here ... until this day.  As we prepared to depart for the tram to the game, downpour of hail out of nowhere!  An audible was called on gametime gear and we all-weathered up.  I think we cycled between cold wind and rain, then sunny and 68 degrees eight times during the game.  That's more like Melbourne weather.

But the weather wasn't the only excitement.  The match between the Geelong Cats (our chosen team) and the Hawthorne Hawks was one for the ages.  Despite a number of shifts in momentum, the Hawks led for much of the match and entered the fourth quarter up 18.  Despite a few more bouts of rain, Geelong fought back kicking a goal to lead the match for what seemed to be the first time 92-88.

Now a quick reprieve to explain how the AFL chooses to run the clock.  Each quarter of the game is 20 minutes with the clock stopping after goals, out-of-bounds plays, major injuries, etc.  You see this clock if you watch it on TV ... until the last 10 minutes of the game. The clock disappears for to the added drama of not knowing when the final horn will sound.  Inside the stadium, the 20 minute clock is not displayed. The crowd and players just see a continuously running clock, neither having any idea when each quarter horn will sound.  You just know the horn for a typical quarter sounds in the 28 to 32 minute range.

Back to the game.  Geelong goes up 4 and the running clock reads somewhere around 26 minutes.  A Geelong player was knocked out during play of this quarter resulting in one of very few injury stoppages.  This one is going to be to the high side of the range.  There's some back and forth at the center of the oval following the bounce and then the ball goes into Hawthorne's wide open Buddy Franklin, one of the most dynamic players in the game.  He's inside Hawthorne's forward 50 (goal kicking range ... a goal is 6 points) all alone.  Instead of taking a bounce and running it all the way to the posts to kick it through for a certain goal and the lead, he kicks one along the ground from 35 meters out.  The wet turf eats the ball up and it comes up short and wide.  Geelong grabs possession and clears only to have Hawthorne quickly respond and move it back into their forward 50 with about 28:30 on the clock.  From that point, the ball stays in Hawthorne goal kicking range for the duration of the game, both sides fighting for possession of a slippery football on a wet field and Hawthorne managing to get off two kicks at goal which both go for behinds (1 point, basically kicking just wide of a goal) during that period.  The pressure was immense, the effort from both sides on the field incredible, and the crowd insane.  Nobody heard the final horn which blew sometime around 32:00 on the clock, the players just stopped playing.  Many of them exhausted laying on the turf.  Geelong wins 92-90.  Incredible finish!

Great end to a great Easter weekend!

Geelong Cats mascot.  Go Cats!

Pre-game warm-up.  Already a guy down on the field.

It rained on us.

Rained on them too.

He rained on somebody's parade.

The wind and rain were a bit chilly from time to time.  Did I mention it
 was also sunny and 68 for a good portion of the game?  No complaints
 about too hot or too cold from this bundled ninja so I shouldn't judge.

The MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds).  It can hold around 100,000.  The dimensions of the footy playing oval are somewhere around 175m end-to-end, 150m side-to-side.  You can see the goal posts to the right side of the picture.  Kick the football anywhere between the center two posts of your offensive end and it's a "goal" for 6 points.  Miss the center two posts, but stay within the outer two posts and it's a "behind" for 1 point.  Following a goal, the ball goes out to the center of the field for a bounce, basically a jump ball.  Following a behind, the ball is played out from a square in front of the goal posts by the team defending that end.

Final score: Geelong 92 - Hawthorne 90.
The numbers in front are the number of goals
and number of behinds.  (14*6) + (8*1) = 92.

Manly Ferry ... Oxymoron? Discuss.

On Easter Sunday, we headed out to take a ferry ride over to Manly Beach.  Manly is about a 40 minute ferry ride out of Sydney Harbor and to the north.  Probably a good thing, as much of Sydney was shut-down on Good Friday, and I imagine that Easter would have been much the same, but as Manly is a pretty big tourist draw (and they have a smokin' deal on ferry rides on Sundays for families), everything was open, and finding things to do was not a problem.  Manly is likely the second most famous beach in Australia (or at least Sydney), behind Bondi Beach (which is known to get over 50,000 people on a hot summer day, which is especially impressive since there are only 23 million people in the entire country).

We decided to take a walk into one of the national parks, and weren't disappointed by the views.  After our walk, we enjoyed lunch at a great little cafe facing the ocean, Jeff got pooped on by a seagull (and for some reason I ducked for cover, rather than take a picture), and got some delicious ice cream.

This is how we knew we were on the correct ferry.

The Sydney Opera House seems to glow. 

Beautiful coastline.  No matter how much of the Australian coast
we see, we're still blown away by how beautiful and diverse it is.

The main drag in Manly.

Manly Beach.  It was closed later in the day.  We were hoping it was because
of sharks.  Turns out there were just strong rips.

Main drag in Manly.

Easily 100 foot drop - no guardrail or fence to protect us.

Water dragon - a protected (and perhaps, indigenous) species.

No fence.  No guardrail.  Could have fallen off of the cliff.

Big Bull photo-bombed my picture.

School of Hospitality, maybe.