Out of nature, into urban life – Melbourne

Very early in the morning, we hear the various birds outside. The kookaburra is the first to be active, ‘laughing’ us awake. Then the corellas join in the wake-up call, performing grand flights around the house. A truly loud wake-up concert has begun. We were awake afterwards!

During breakfast, three kangaroos hop across the lawn in the front yard. It seems like they want to bid us farewell...

We load our bags into the car and say goodbye to Halls Gap and the wildlife that we have truly enjoyed.

The road has us again, and we need to cover about 250 km. Along the way, we encounter a few emus.

Unfortunately, and this is really sad, we often see at the roadside: run-over kangaroos or other animals that are no longer recognizable. This is because the animal carcasses are simply left by the roadside and not cleared away. We recognize this by the fact that the animals look slightly decayed or are even skeletonized at the side. Not a particularly pleasant sight, and one tries not to look.

By noon, we reach Melbourne. The largest city in Australia. Only a few thousand more inhabitants than Sydney, which also has over 5 million and is the second-largest city. The third-largest city is Brisbane on the east coast, with over 2.5 million inhabitants. This means that of the 25 million Australians, about half live in the three largest cities. Given the size of the entire country, the remaining 12 million are distributed over large land areas, and many regions are uninhabited...

We return the car at the airport and take the Sky Bus to Melbourne's main train station. Close by, we have our hotel for the next three days, a Holiday Express. Here, there are USB ports at the outlets again. Yes, it sounds funny, but if you only have one adapter for the Australian sockets, everything needs to be well-timed in terms of what you charge when...

We use the afternoon to look around for the first time. Melbourne lies on the Yarra River and thus has nice areas by the (very dirty) river. Additionally, the city gives off a modern impression with beautiful parks, squares, restaurants with outdoor seating, and many glass skyscrapers. We will take a closer look at all this tomorrow.

For today, the few pictures of the skyline will have to suffice.