Land Down Under

Last week, Amy and I left Melbourne to start our drive down Australia’s Great Ocean Road, which follows the coastline of the Southern Ocean. Did you know there was a Southern Ocean? I didn’t. Well, there is, and it’s south of Australia, which is probably why they gave it that name. The Great Ocean Road is an incredibly beautiful drive, and the vistas have been phenomenal, like driving the Pacific Coast Highway.

On our first day we stopped in the small town of Lorne, and if you’ve seen the previous video of our cabin, you’ll have seen how things got started – with a visit from our avian neighbors, the cockatoos. Any time we took a step on to the porch, the wild cockatoos would swoop in (keyword: “swoop”) and look for handouts. And not just one bird, but three or four at a time. I don’t like big parrot-like birds lurking on my porch, and frankly, large birds creep me out altogether. They stare at you, too – they don’t take their eyes off of you. Look at this:

It was like Bodega Bay in a certain Hitchcock film, and I was the blonde. I picked the wrong day to stop swearing.

Wait, what?!

I’m not Catholic, but in solidarity with Amy (who is), I gave up cursing for Lent. Last year I gave up meat, and the year before I gave up booze. This year I gave up one of my biggest vices, swearing. Anyone who knows me well knows I pepper my conversation with obscenity as liberally as a Hungarian sprinkles paprika into his goulash, the result of my years spent in a pro-football locker-room, the merchant marines, and various outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Sure, a little everyday cussing is probably cathartic, but a litany of profanity isn’t very becoming. So in the hopes that forty days of watching my language might change my behavior, I decided to give up swearing for Lent.

Big mistake.

Eventually we checked out of the cabin, and hit the open road. We hugged the coastline for several miles, and saw some beautiful scenery along the way.

Lucky for me, it kind of leaves you speechless, so no problem with the Lenten promises, though you’re apt to take a wide turn and see some incredible vista and mumble “Holy…smokes!…”

Things got more interesting when we hit the town of Kennet River, less than an hour from Lorne. In the cabin video, you heard me lament that we’d seen no koalas, no kangaroos, and no wallabies, but plenty of cockatoos. That would soon change. Kennet River is known for its colony of koalas, and here we got to finally see some stereotypical Aussie wildlife.

Even as a former outlaw biker and generally hard-nosed tough guy who used to work as a stevedore, I have to admit, these guys are cute. They were hanging out in the trees in a local park, either sleeping or feeding on leaves. They look, well,…cuddly.

Eventually we drove further into the park to see if we could find more koalas. I drove slowly, and we had our eyes focused up in the trees. I came around a bend, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something up the road in the distance.

“HOLY!…COW! It’s a kangaroo!!”

Our drive up the road had paid off, and we spent a few minutes inching up to the kangaroo, who darted away. As we drove on, we found a low-lying koala passed out in a tree like he’d been out on a long bender. Amy got within feet of him to take pictures. The koala woke up and looked her in the eye. They communed.

I can’t say for sure, but I think Amy gained some valuable koala knowledge from him, like the Buddha under the bhodi tree. She’s like a koala whisperer.

We continued on our way down the road, and later that afternoon we drove out to Cape Otway to see its famous lighthouse, about a 15-mile drive through a wooded area. At one point, zipping through the woods, another kangaroo suddenly bounced out in front of the rental car. I slammed on the brakes: “JESU-…Golly!!”

We came within feet of making kangaroo burgers, but narrowly avoided disaster. I gathered my senses, and we headed down the road a few more miles to find some cars stopped by the side of the road, looking at koalas. We were hitting koala-rich vein, and Amy perked up, on the lookout.

When we were in Cambodia, Amy would put on her glasses to see the wild monkeys on the side of the road. Ever since then she’s called them her “Monkey Glasses.” The Monkey Glasses were working their magic apparently, because as we drove, The Koala Whisperer began to see more and more of her animal patronus charms. I was focused on the road, looking to avoid any further rogue kangaroos and Lenten slip-ups, but Amy however…

“There’s a koala!…there’s one!…there’s one…and there’s another one…”
“How do you keep seeing all these koalas?
“I just look for the fuzzy lumps up in the trees.”
“Well I can’t see sh-…I can’t see anything.”
“WAIT, BACK UP, BACK UP!!!”
“What?! What did you see?!”
“There’s like a colony of kangaroos!!”

I hit the brakes and backed up the car. And sure enough, back in the woods about 50 feet, sitting on the ground eating some grass…were two cows. The Koala Whisperer in her Ralph Lauren Monkey Glasses had misfired. And we never even went to the lighthouse, instead pushing on to spend the night in Port Campbell, near some of the greatest scenery on the Great Ocean Road.

The next day we drove off the Ocean Road briefly to have lunch inland, in the town of Timboon. The area is best known for its dairy farms and local cheeses. We had a great cheese plate for lunch (as well as some delicious pork belly) and after, we stopped by a local landmark:

That’s right – Cheeseworld! It’s like a whole world of cheese, and we went there. We read about cheese, we looked at cheese, we bought some cheese, and had a few milkshakes. With all the dairy appreciation, you’d think the local cows would have been happy with us. But apparently not. As we got closer to our motel room in Port Fairy, we pulled behind a double-decker stock trailer. It had the words “beef bus” painted on the back, and it was filled with cattle being moved somewhere, likely for some nefarious end. We pulled up next to the beef bus, and here’s where Elsie got even. Our rental car was showered with cattle urine.

I don’t know how the cow did it, but her aim was impeccable. It was like being in a yellow car wash, shot out of a bovine Super-Soaker. Sure, the wipers could clean the windshield, but the rest of the car, dusty from a few days of driving on dirt and gravel roads, looked like a map of the Grand Canyon. The next day was the first Friday of Lent, and we had been warned – we would eat no meat.

Animals: 1 – John & Amy: 0.

Friday morning we were awakened by an odd ringtone outside our Port Fairy motel window. It would repeat every few minutes. I was getting mad that the thoughtless person wouldn’t answer or turn off their phone: “What’s with this assh-…goofball?!” I got up and looked out the window, and this was the scene:

It was a couple of Australian magpies. They have the strangest song. Google it. Wait! – DON’T Google it, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEYc8Ge3nw
Imagine having that waking you up. It’s pretty incredible to think it comes from a bird. That’s a bird I can respect, unlike creepy voyeuristic cockatoos.

Our first stop after leaving Port Fairy was the Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve, where you can see koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, and emus. After parking the car, we went to the ranger station to get a trail map. While there, I read a little bit about emus. Some interesting facts:

Emus are the third largest bird in the world.
Emus can grow to about 7-8 feet tall.
Emus are flightless, but can run very fast.

So, armed with this knowledge, Amy and I went out for a hike. And before we got out of the carpark, we came face to face with a prehistoric looking emu.

You know how I feel about cockatoos. Emus are a whole different story. This is a bird who can claw out my eyes, run faster than me, and likely dunk on me in a game of one-on-one. I was having none of it. We stopped and watched quietly, and the emu approached us, very slowly. I was ready to punch this animal in the face and run, but when he got too close, Amy assumed this position:

Yep – they may be big, but they’re dumb! If you stretch out your hands high over your head, they think you’re a bigger, domintant emu, and they’ll walk away. And that’s what happened with this emu. Sucker.

Animals: 1 – John & Amy: 1

So we headed up the trail, and Amy and I became very quiet in the hopes of seeing a kangaroo or koala in the wild. The Koala Whisperer kept her eyes in the trees, and I kept my eyes on the bush. And then…a rustling in the trees…and just in front of us… “SON OF A…Biscuit!”

An emu hopped out on the path in front of us, scaring the daylights out of me. This thing was the size of Kareem Abdul Jabbar wearing lifts. Hearts racing, we stopped and let it pass, and continued our trek.

Soon, in a clearing, we came upon a fresh turd. Yes, a turd. Amy, a keen bush tracker, noted that this was an unusually big turd. And like all good zoologists, she picked up a stick and started to poke it, as if it might spring to life.

“What are you doing?”
“I’m poking it.”
“It looks like an everyday dog turd. Even worse, it could be human…”
“I think it’s a kangaroo turd.”
“Do kangaroo turds look like that? What do kangaroo turds look like?”

Well, all credit to the Whisperer, because it turns out it was a kangaroo turd. And a few minutes later, in the underbrush, I spotted a massive kangaroo, with forearms the size of Floyd Mayweather’s.

This guy was big. We watched as he fed on some grass, and eventually he hopped off into some brush. We walked on a little further, and minutes later, more rustling, and with it another startled kangaroo, who stared at us as long as we stared at him, until he, too, rustled off into some impassable shrubbery.

With no other kangaroos to be found, Amy and I started to head back down the trail towards the car. Amy heard rustling. We paused, and right next to us…

“MOTHER…of Pearl!”

Just off the path in the trees, two massive emus looked us in the eye, and then slunk off. We picked up our pace, and then the best wildlife encounter of our trip happened. Directly in front of us, a wallaby crossed the trail. He hopped into a bit of brush, and nosed around for something to eat. Amy and I quietly approached.

This little guy was about the size of a black lab. We moved in slowly, and the wallaby didn’t seem to pay any attention to us. Then he turned toward us, and hopped in our direction, heading just behind us. He turned, and he very slowly started to sniff and move his ears. That’s when we noticed – this wallaby had one milky eye, and the other was missing. He was blind, and with us frozen in place, he slowly approached us trying to figure out what was going on, sniffing and twitching his ears. We were within a foot or two, like you could reach out and grab him.

It was incredible. And as a former longshoreman, amateur Golden Gloves contender, and retired hard-boiled detective, I’m not afraid to tell you it was very cute and touching. We didn’t want to move and disturb or scare him, but eventually we slowly backed away, and he hopped off into the woods. “That was fu…reaking incredible.”

Animals for the win.

Over the next few days, during our most westerly stay in the tiny fishing village of Nelson, we were warned not to drive at dawn or dusk – the kangaroos are out en masse, and will jump in front of your car like a whitetail deer. (Ed. note: see our Nelson hotel room in our last post). We also spoke to a nice woman about koalas:

“Ooh, they’re nasty little buggers.”
“Koalas?!”
“Oh yeah, if you get too close to them, they’ll scratch you up. Nasty things.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that.”
“I’ve been to Colorado in the States.”
“You have? Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes – you know what I like?”
“What’s that?”
“Squirrels. They’re cute, I like them a lot.”

I guess everything is relative, and familiarity breeds contempt.

As we headed back east, working our way back towards our current cabin stay in Lorne, we stopped in the Glenelg River State Park. There we saw dozens of kangaroos who leapt in front of our car as we slowly drove down the dirt road. When we exited the park and picked up speed on the highway, two massive emus crossed in front of us. I’ll tell you one thing: you don’t have to find the wildlife in Australia, it finds you.

As we drove on, I realized I’d stopped reacting as violently to the wildlife, Amy had stopped putting on her Monkey Glasses, and I’d stopped swearing as much. Even as I type here in Lorne, the cockatoos on the porch don’t bother me as much as they once did. Familiarity breeds contempt. And some breeds are more familiar, and some breeds more contemptible.

(We know this was a longer-than-usual post…if you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You shall be rewarded with a song: