The Travelling Life of Silvan Colani
October 2008 - Australia
We were invited to attend two friends’ weddings in Australia and decided to bridge the week in between with some excellent sight-seeing, fantastic food and plenty of good wine and beer!
We flew into Sydney for the first wedding, which conveniently for us was held on a boat and thus provided us with a free harbor cruise on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. The Sydney Opera House is obviously one of the most iconic sights in the world but I am equally impressed by the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which we decided to climb the following Monday (see www.bridgeclimb.com.au) – a great experience I can highly recommend. The rest of our time in Sydney was spent mostly eating: excellent fish and chips at Doyles in Watson’s Bay; some of the best mussels I’ve ever had at the Fish at The Rocks and some of the smoothest Gorgonzola Gnocchi at a lovely small Italian place whose name I forgot. Thank God the Aussies didn’t learn to cook from the British!
Then we were off to Melbourne where we rented a Mini Cooper Cabriolet (from Thrifty) to take in The Great Ocean Road, one of the world’s great drives that’s been on my To-Do List for a long time. I figured a convertible would be the right vehicle to do it in as I always imagined Australia as one large hot and sunny continent. Well, apparently not in spring on the coast where temperatures hovered around 15 degrees! Nevertheless, when the sun came out the roof came down and we put our sweaters on. It is indeed a fantastic drive with spectacular sights such as the famous Twelve Apostles – sandstone rock formations that are slowly being eroded by the wild ocean. The southern ocean itself is a sight to behold – the huge swells crashing ashore have a surprisingly soothing effect to city slickers like us!
While I had underestimated the weather, I’ve overestimated the distances of the Great Ocean Road as we drove the entire length in a single day – and no, I wasn’t speeding at all! Thus I figured we could take in a couple more sights before the second wedding.
Our next priority was the penguins at Philip Island – some 300kms from Port Fairy, our rest stop for the night. It took us a day to get there, but it was worth every drop of fuel. The wonderful thing about Australian wild life is that you actually get to see it in the wild! We spotted our first kangaroo by the road side – albeit a dead one – but it was shortly followed by three living ones. And we found koalas in trees by a caravan park. But the penguin parade on Phillip Island beats it all: every night after sunset (around 8pm) the penguins come ashore here and waddle across the beach to their burrows on the hill side. The riskiest place for the Little Penguins is the open beach where they are exposed to birds of prey. Thus - like on D-Day in the Normandy – they wait for the cover of darkness, gather in groups of about 20 (safety in numbers!) before racing across the sand for the relative safely of the rocks and grass beyond where they dry off and chat with their fellow birds. It must rate as one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen in the wild! And for AUD35 (book the Penguin Plus ticket) you get to see it all from close-up! (Tip: you’ll be waiting in the cold for about an hour so dress warmly!)
With still more time on our hands we decided to also pay a visit to the vineyards of Yarra Valley. Now the good thing about wine growing regions is that they tend to get a lot of sunshine and warm weather and Yarra is no different. It was a gorgeous blue sky day and the rolling hills of this valley, covered with over 70 wineries, are an absolute delight. Most of the estates offer free tastings and many feature excellent restaurants with superb views of the vineyards. We had a wonderful lunch at Oakridge Estate, a nice dinner at the rather funky Giant Steps / Innocent Bystander winery and stayed at a secluded B&B up a side valley.
After a day of wine it was time for some beer action as we paid a visit to the Foster’s Fuel Factory in Melbourne. Foster’s is of course the official fuel sponsor of the Liechtenstein Princely Navy, but apparently nobody in Australia drinks the stuff – as the lady at the Foster’s tour pointed out herself (not the most brand-conscious employee, I must say!) But aside from Foster’s the Carlton and United Brewery (CUB) churns out some two million liters of other fine beer per day and all employees get two free cartons of their choice per month. Now that’s what I call employee benefits! We had a mussels and beer lunch with our friends from Foster’s at a Belgian beer bar (Foster’s also brews Stella under license!) and dinner at what must be the in-place in Melbourne right now – Gingerboy – featuring fancy, yet very tasty, Asian dishes.
Next day was the second wedding which featured more drinks and more food and as a result I’m going on a diet now until Christmas.
In conclusion, unless you really do not like good eating and drinking, have an allergy against fresh air and think all wildlife belong in a zoo, I would strongly suggest you pay a visit to Australia one of these days. Even if it’s only for a week!
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