Rooney (Jr.) Homepage #3: Christmas Vacation

Bet you thought we weren't going to keep-up the home-page now that Melissa is working! Well, you thought wrong--at least for the time-being! We accidentally sent the Christmas vacation video-tapes home to the Rooneys (Sr.) before downloading some images for our new home-page...but fortunately, Melissa's lab has a scanner, so we were able to scan a few still images that she took during our holiday. We're thrilled with how professional they look! We want to emphasize that these are pictures that WE actually took. The landscape(s) really were this beautiful! For once, the pictures may actually do the live-surroundings justice! Hope you enjoy them as much as we do!!

En-route to the twelve Apostles, we stopped in the town of Anglesea (along the Great Ocean Road) and observed these kangaroos grazing in the afternoon shade. The wild kangaroos are so much more beautiful than those in captivity...

Next, we stopped in the resort town of Lorne and camped at a pretty nice caravan park. We made chicken fajitas and baked beans on the 20 cent-coin-fed electric barbeque. An Aussie family gave us a couple of 20 cent coins because we had no coins of value less than a dollar...then they proceeded to stare in wonder as we made our non-traditional Aussie meal: everything was wrapped in aluminium (as they call it) foil, and we heated the beans by just placing the can on the barbie. They ensured us it would take hours before our beans were done, but it really only took a single hour! They seemed impressed when we unwrapped the foil and opened the beans and revealed somewhat of a cheap Mexican meal. The following day, we awoke early and hiked to Erskine falls, shown here. It was a beautiful hike, especially since the sun was just rising over the gum-tree-lined horizon.

On Christmas Eve, we drove to the Apostles View Motel, the nearest accomodation to the Twelve Apostles. It was a great farm-stay with the biggest and most vocal pig (Miss Piggy) that we have EVER seen/heard, a beautiful thoroughbred-cross horse, a leash-trained cow, a very wooly sheep, and a few chickens. The accomodation itself was really nice, and we would definitely go back. That night, we went to the Twelve Apostles and watched the most magnificent sunset we have ever seen. The sun illuminated the waves in a long and thick bright line, and the Apostles reflected the red and purple hues of the muted sky. It was probably the best Christmas present we both received!

On Christmas day, we watched the sunrise (at 5 AM!)--but it was a foggy morning, and it was nowhere near as impressive as the sunset the night before. But we did see the fairy penguins far below, making their way from the bush to the sea, like they did every morning. Later that day, we hiked along the coast around and beyond the Twelve Apostles. Here is the beach at Lock Ard Gorge.

After hiking along the beach all day Christmas day, we had a wonderful crayfish (Aussie for lobster) and fish-and-chips dinner on the deck outside of our motel room. Another beautiful sunset formed the backdrop for our meal. Afterwards, we spent some time with the pig and the horse; we turned in early that evening.

It rained the next day, so we got in the car and drove west until the rain seemed to let up. This took us to the old smelting town of Portland and beyond to Cape Bridgewater. We checked into an amazing farm-stay called Trewalla Springs farm, where we watched the rain blow through the sun's rays amidst the emus, deer and horses outside the large window which formed the rear wall of our accomodation. Our accomodation was an old country school house (fully equipped with wall-length chalkboard and chalk) which had four rooms, including a washing machine, and a kitchen, as well as a double bed, and three twins, not to mention a beautiful wooden dining room table and a brand new color television and lounge area! We really lucked out in finding this place, particularly since the rate was only $A60/night (That's about $40 U.S. dollars/night). Our hosts (Marilyn and Neil) actually rescued a koala on the roadside that night, and they showed us the poor guy the next morning. We were sad that we could not stay longer at this wonderful get-away, but we had to move on towards the Grampians. On the way, we hiked a trail at Cape Bridgewater that lead us to a non-breeding fur-seal colony. Although the day was foggy and cold, we enjoyed the Cape immensely. Then we headed northward to the Grampians and pitched our tent in this massive Victoria State Park.

We did an overnight treck the first two days of our stay in the Grampians--hiked 32 kilometers (~19 miles) in 26 hours! You can tell we were pretty proud of ourselves. Most of the hike was up a rocky mountain called Mount Difficult. We saw lots of reptiles and even a wallaby at the top of the mountain. We were exhausted and our feet were blistered after this hike. The rest of our vacation was reduced to short day-walks to take in the typical but magnificent natural sights in the Grampians. Pictured here is McKenzie Falls (right), pretty much the landmark of the Grampians. The photo on the left is just an artsy-fartsy picture of one of the small waterfalls en-route to McKenzie Falls.

For the next four days, we camped mostly within the park, itself. Our favorite campsite was a place called Buandik, near the Bullimina shelter, a major living aboriginal art-site. It was very remote, accessible only by dirt road, and it seemed to be a favorite with kangaroos and kookaburra too. The chimpanzee-like laughter of the kookaburra filled the evening sky. They paid very little heed to us humans, as they swooped down within a few feet of us to scoop up bugs. These they often fed to their fluffy young, who gurgled loudly in the trees, awaiting their evening meals. Someone told us that Hollywood thought the laughter of the kookaburra was very jungle-sounding, so they used it in the first Tarzan movie--this only confirms our opinion that Hollywood is filled with bloody idiots! Pictured here is the red dirt road leading to Buandik campsite, and the blue-gray patches of a manna gum at sunset.

The last day of our Christmas vacation was spent at the historic gold-mining town of Ballarat. This was actually a bit of a tourist trap, so we were glad we had not alotted more time there. However, the Ballarat Wildlife park was the best we've been to since we arrived in Melbourne in July (and we've been to quite a few wildlife parks since then). The kangaroo wandered the park freely and were very friendly towards people, and the staff handled the koala and wallabies regularly so that they, too, were used to people. We actually got to pet both a koala and a wallaby. And they really didn't seem to mind us at all. Unfortunately, we video-taped a lot more than we took still-pictures, and as I said, the video-tape has been sent to the states.

We were very sad when our vacation was over. I had one final week before I started work in a Chemistry lab at Monash University--it went by way too quickly. I am enjoying my new job nonetheless--the lab members and my advisor are very nice and relaxed. Mike continues to plug away at his research in his not-so-laid-back lab, and we are hoping that he will get some positive results soon. We will be travelling for a week on the north island of New Zealand with Mom Bunin (my mom) in less than three weeks. We can't wait! We'll have more pictures then!

Hope all is well with all of you!

--Melissa and Mike

One more thing: With regard to the sound clip that should have played when you opened this web-page...No, we have not become Avid Spice Girls' fans...but for our first month or two in Australia, it seemed that this song was all that we heard. It got to the point that we were singing it in our sleep! So for those of you wondering what it was like to move to Australia, here is a little sound sample!

This photo is of a funky tree that I saw near Buandik campsite; I believe it had been recently hit by lightening. It looks like Nature's version of Flash Dance!