{"id":622,"date":"2011-11-14T15:29:34","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T06:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=622"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:23:12","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:23:12","slug":"waltzin-matilda-melbourne-11122011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=622","title":{"rendered":"Waltzin\u2019 Matilda \u2013 Melbourne \u2013 [11\/12\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cYou want to what\u2026?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCampbell and I are getting bikes today\u2026you coming?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Half asleep, I muttered something back to Wildish about \u201cyeah sure, meet you at the gangway after drill\u201d and fell back asleep\u2026until of course the alarm that marks the beginning of drill keened through the air and woke me up again.<\/p>\n

You see, there are a lot of things provided to the crew to keep us entertained since a lot of us have a long time on board. Cheap DVD rental, internet (though we pay through the nose for that), etc etc\u2026and bikes. There\u2019s a small supply of bikes on board that we can hire out for free while in port \u2013 an option I had always meant to take advantage of during my time in Alaska, but that I never quite got around to. The Sitka coffee shop was, after all, a lot less effort.<\/p>\n

So it was that I found myself coasting down the road next to the harbor, with the wheels whirring as we dodged people, skateboarders, and the occasional dog, on what we thought was a very straight forward route. We thought. <\/em>On the map, the route to the Melbourne Zoo looked like a straight line, but we took a wrong turn somewhere\u2026<\/p>\n

Long story short, we did get there, it just took us a fair amount longer than we expected. By the time we got there my legs were aching, it was starting to try to rain and breakfast was definitely feeling like a long time ago indeed\u2026<\/p>\n

But the zoo was definitely worth it\u2026<\/p>\n

I have a funny relationship with zoos (like I do with so many things), part of me heartily disagrees with seeing animals in any kind of captivity, but at the same time, I find the creatures so fascinating, and I would never get to see<\/em> any of them otherwise. Unless I were to go on an actual African safari\u2026<\/p>\n

Aaanyway\u2026I\u2019ve not been to a zoo at all since my big farewell day in London (longer ago now than I care to admit), when I went to the London Zoo, and then I went alone. There\u2019s a lot to be said for travelling alone, but there\u2019s a lot to be said for wandering through with two good friends, enjoying the break from the ever-present testosterone heavy environment on the ship (seriously, the ship is a super high<\/em> ration of men to women, and sometimes, you really do<\/em> just need some girl-time), dragging each other to see the elephants, \u201cno! The orangutans!\u201d \u201cNo! The Zebras!\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

Hey look! Platypuses really do exist!<\/em><\/p>\n

The platypus is proof that there must be some kind of divine creating force in the universe<\/em><\/p>\n

Why?<\/em><\/p>\n

Look at it! No animal that weird could have developed on its own!<\/em><\/p>\n

Campbell, Wildish and I have a lot in common, and a lot going on in our lives right now, there are a lot of times when our busy little brains will simply not be quiet\u2026well, there\u2019s nothing like pointing and giggling at a baby kangaroo to distract an overly-analytical mind.<\/p>\n

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And also, since this is Australia: Koalas and Kangaroos and Emus thrown in for good measure. I never thought I\u2019d actually see a koala, before this the closest I\u2019d ever seen to a koala was the stuffed animal my gramma brought me back from her trip to Australia when I was just little. But there it was, with its little tiny sparkling black eyes, up in a tree, ignoring us completely. Totally adorable. I also never knew how many different kinds of kangaroo there were, I mean, you always have this somewhat generic image of a kangaroo in your mind, but there were all different ones, from ones the size of a small car, to little tiny baby ones that would barely come up to your knee.<\/p>\n

As usual though, it was the cats that left an impression on me. And I\u2019m naturally not talking about the little cute kind. These are the big<\/em> cats. The snow leopard that \u2013 even asleep in the back of its enclosure \u2013 looks huge, the Sumerian tiger that rolls over and looks into your camera lens as if to say \u201cwere it not for this fence little lady, and were it not for the fact that I\u2019m far too sleepy\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n

And of course, the lions.<\/p>\n

I know that in nature, male lions do not precisely live together. Once a male reaches a certain age, he is essentially evicted from the pride and left to find his own lionesses. Fully grown adult males do not cohabitate in the wild. But I suspect these males were either rescue lions, or had been raised in captivity \u2013 in each other\u2019s company \u2013 from the time they were cubs, because there were three of them in the same enclosure. Even behind two layers of fencing, the way they move gives you the chills. And then, just as Campbell and I were about to turn away and head towards the entrance to meet up with Wildish, we stop absolutely shock still.<\/p>\n

Is that\u2026?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yeah\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

When you hear a lion roar, you swear it\u2019s the most terrifying sound you\u2019ve ever heard. It freezes you in your spot and makes your blood actually run cold.<\/p>\n

You think that\u2019s the last sound you\u2019re ever going to hear\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

That sound alone, was worth the price of admission to the zoo.<\/p>\n

That and one other thing.<\/p>\n

As we were walking along the trail next to the elephant paddock, we looked to our right. Then looked at our watches.<\/p>\n

Wanna go check out the butterflies quickly<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d forgotten how magical it was to walk into a butterfly enclosure. It\u2019s like walking into a fairy land. Brightly coloured wings everywhere you look. And if you stand, very, very still, those wings will brush up against your skin, like the softest brush of fingertips. Our little trio isn\u2019t exactly the type to consider ourselves \u2018too grown up\u2019 for anything, and so we stood, frozen, waiting. And one by one, we each had one settle on us somewhere, just for a moment. Barely long enough to snap a photograph, but long enough.<\/p>\n

Of course, you can\u2019t stay among the animals forever. Being as how we\u2019re not Dr Doolittle. Eventually we had to start back to the ship, deciding against the tram as we weren\u2019t sure of the schedule and we weren\u2019t sure if they would allow us to load bikes\u2026which meant we only had the option to ride back. The first part of the ride was amazingly easy, it was all downhill, so you could coast the entire length of the park with the wind whipping by you, never having to peddle once. But then, we got into the city proper, and it had \u2013 of course \u2013 been raining. The streets were slick, and crowded\u2026and in conditions like that, no matter how careful you are, a wipeout is nearly inevitable. We were on our day down a sidestreet to avoid the main throughfare, trying not to be nervous that there were suddenly three cars right out our tail, and we swerved to bump up onto the sidewalk\u2026unfortunately, the curb was low, the turn was sharp, and, while I saw it coming \u2013 by the time the side of my wheel caught the edge of the curb it was too late to do anything but think \u201coh bloody hell\u2026\u201d followed quickly by something that I think ran the lines of \u201cjust let me land away<\/em> from the car\u201d<\/p>\n

Plowed into the pavement, both hands, both knees. Bike went one way, I went the other, and then the bike tipped back and fell on<\/em> me\u2026just because it could. Wildish and Campbell saw it happened in the reflection of a shop window, and I swear I was more scared for them than I was for me as I sort of clambered back to my feet and examined the damage. Not a great deal hurt except my pride, though I think I still have some of the Melbourne sidewalk\u00a0 embedded in one of my hands. My knees are going to be a wee bit bruised up for the next few days, but nothing major, nothing bleeding\u2026just very very achy\u2026I slapped some ice on it to keep the swelling down and spent the rest of the evening at my library desk looking at pictures of lions and butterflies.<\/p>\n

All in all, I\u2019d say it was one of those days where the good outweighs the bad J<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou want to what\u2026?\u201d \u201cCampbell and I are getting bikes today\u2026you coming?\u201d Half asleep, I muttered something back to Wildish about \u201cyeah sure, meet you at the gangway after drill\u201d and fell back asleep\u2026until of course the alarm that marks … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-asiaaustralia-2011","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-a2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2188,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/2188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}