Yarra Bend Park

Jen and I were busy little girls today. We spent the morning preparing part of the Christmas present we're working on for our house-mates. I think it's finally dawned on me that this is the last week that we'll all be together... the Dutch girls and Irene are moving out on Friday, a whole bunch of us are going our separate ways (although ironically we're mostly heading to Sydney) for Christmas itself, and then by the time Jen and I get back from our January travels, everyone else in the house will have moved away and we'll be coming back to a whole slew of new house mates. We just hope they'll be as cool as the current lot are!

Anyhow! Back to the busyness. We're baking cookies for all of our house-mates, but due to the fact that every time we bake cookies when others are home, the kitchen starts to resemble a vultures' convention, we knew that in order to get all this baking done we needed to wait until most people were out of the house. So we baked one batch of cookies today, and then we'll do more tomorrow and the final batch on Wednesday. This way all the goodies will be ready to go for Friday's party. While we were working on the cookies (white chocolate chip with macadamia nuts, mmmmm) we also caught up on laundry, email, and all that good stuff. Suffice it to say that by early afternoon, we were definitely ready to get out of the house for a while. The weather today was nice but not overly warm, so instead of going to the beach (which had been the original plan), we headed out to explore Yarra Bend Park.

There's a bit of a story behind the choice of this park as our destination. On the weekend when we were at the Moonlight Cinema, I was (of course) completely fascinated by the hundreds of fruit bats flying overhead. Back at home the next day, I did some poking around on the Internet and discovered that the bat colony (or camp, as they're properly called) was in Yarra Bend Park. So when we needed a destination to explore today, I suggested this park, and away we went. It turned out to be a bit of an adventure getting there, what with the trams and buses and trying to find bus stops and all, but a little over an hour after we'd set out, we arrived at the park. I had been expecting another manicured, formal park like the Botanical Gardens or Fitzroy Gardens, but this park was basically a chunk of wild bushland, just sitting in the heart of the city!

There were a couple of things I wanted to check out in the park. We stopped in at the boathouse to see how much it would cost to rent canoes or kayaks. While the prices are a little steep, it's still under $20 to rent a boat for an hour, so perhaps that's something Jen and I can look at doing at a later date. Of course I wanted to check out the bat camp, but it turned out to be on the exact opposite end of the park from where we were, and we didn't have time to walk there (the park is at least 300 acres, with an extremely windey river going through it, and a golf course, so it's not like we could easily get to the other side). I'll go back another day to look for the bats. So instead, we took a footpath that promised to lead to Dight Falls. These falls are significant because they mark the spot in the Yarra River which separates the fresh water upstream from the brackish/salty water downstream, leading out to Port Phillip Bay.

The route to the falls was not as well-marked as I would have liked, and several times we ended up detouring or backtracking to find the right way. In the process, we managed to get ourselves completely turned around, and lost all sense of direction! We did in the end find the falls, but it turns out that the falls had been converted into an artificial weir many years ago (apparently to supply the local flour mill, which has long since been demolished)... so they weren't as pretty as we would have liked. Ah well - can't win them all! At any rate, after resting for a bit at the falls and checking out the local heron and ducks (who were checking us out in return), we decided it was time to head back to town. Problem was, we were all turned around and had no idea which way we needed to go! It was a 2km or more walk back the way we had come, and we didn't really want to go that way, so we chose a footpath at random (not that it was signed or anything) and headed off.

When we eventually came out of the park at the end of the path, we found ourselves on a small cul-de-sac. On the opposite side of the little street was an old converted convent. It is now home to various artist studios and cafes, and the grounds are open to everyone. Intrigued, we headed inside to take a look. The place was beautiful! I snapped a few shots and they can be found in my "Melbourne - Part Three" album on facebook. Unfortunately by the time we got there it was after 5pm, so we didn't do as much exploring as I would have liked. All too soon we were back out on the road where, after a few false turns, we finally found our way back to a main street where we were able to catch a bus back towards home.

It seems surreal in some ways that the first part of my Australian adventures are almost over. This coming weekend will mark a big milestone, with so many of our house-mates preparing to leave. There seems to be an unspoken agreement in the house that we're going to spend as much time together this week as we can. So tonight, a whole bunch of us sat down in the living room to watch the old movie "A Christmas Story", in the hopes of putting ourselves in the Christmas spirit. (This has been quite the challenge in a land of sunshine and warm weather!) Hopefully we'll be able to continue gathering for some evening Christmas cheer all week long.