Whew, long weekend, even longer break from blogging! The weather in Melbourne was pretty lovely this weekend, with the perfect amount of cloud cover to give me some pretty great photos. Yesterday Luke and I headed to the Cathedral Ranges northeast of the city to try to inject a bit of physical activity into our current inactive lifestyle.
The views from the top of Cathedral Peak was pretty unreal, and the heavy cloud that was hanging around when we first left our car in the parking lot cleared away just in time for us to reach the top. We enjoyed a nice little picnic lunch up there in the sunshine, and then hiked back down to the sounds of lyrebirds in the forest around us. If you’ve never heard of a lyrebird (I hadn’t until I moved here), they’re these funny looking birds that have this weird ability to mimic the sounds that they hear, whether it’s the call of a kookaburra, the sound of a camera shutter, and even sirens – all of which are sounds we heard. And as we reached the bottom of the mountain, we came across a lyre bird in full dress, feathers up, courting a female. It was absolutely unbelievable watching this bird walk around in front of us (it was so close!) making all these funny sounds, including a chainsaw, while following this other bird around. It’s pretty rare to actually see a lyre bird anyway, but to see what we saw? Pretty unlikely. Both Luke and I just stood there, mouths agape, staring at each other thinking ‘is this really happening?’.
The other thing that was really interesting and kind of awe-inspiring (not necessarily in a good way) about this day trip was that it was right in the path of the Black Saturday bushfires that affected and killed a lot of people here in Melbourne back in 2009. It was a very sobering drive through the burned out parts of the land, and it was really very weird to be on a frivolous day trip in an area that we knew had seen so much devastation. Even from the top of the Cathedral Peak we could see where the fires had blown through, and regions just a few hunder metres away that were totally unaffected. For a girl from suburban Ontario who doesn’t really understand the dangers of forest fires, it was definitely an eye-opening experience to one of the biggest natural disasters that my new home country faces.
The rest of our weekend, when not observing native Aussie wildlife, was spent hunkered down working on my updated site design (which should come soon, I hope), Luke’s company website, and on the Meluri storefront (the science behind retail is so mindblowing!). We also managed to finally snap a picture of our view of the city as we drive back home from the Mornington Peninsula, so I can show you guys what a lovely sight it is every weekend when we head back home. How clear is that view? I hope you all had a great weekend, long or not, and have a happy Tuesday too. Four more days til we do it all again!
