Saturday Night Loser's Club, Vol. XCII: Guest Edition, Travel Australia

Good evening, Saturday Night gang!  Thanks for stopping by - chingchongchinaman has left this diary in my hands for the night.  Please join us for chit-chat and stuff.  Just relax.

I have received several gentle hints to share some of our travel adventures.  We recently spent 5 weeks in Melbourne, Australia for my husband's job.  We traveled entirely within Victoria while we were there.  

Some of you also know we are remodeling our kitchen.  I am happy to share that the kitchen is now 100% functional again - the second version of the dishwasher arrived unharmed.  I am enjoying the new cupboards and countertops, especially the sink.  I may share pictures of this after I figure out where to store everything in the new configuration.

Now, onward to Australia!

 My husband is a university professor in Salt Lake City, Utah.  He also has a love of travel, and in fact seems crabby if he is home for too long at a stretch.  We have always taken advantage of his business travel for some family time away from home.  He was invited to Australia last summer, but I didn't want to give up my summer for anyone else's winter.  I suggested that they invited him back during our winter, and they did.  We pulled our kids (ages 6 and 4) out of school and went!  

We survived the 15-hour flight and the ?90 minutes to 2 hours waiting to go through Customs.  We happily took a taxi to our Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverly in Monash.  The taxi driver pointed out the famous sights of downtown Melbourne, but not very much stuck that first day.

My first impressions were that everything was very green, very warm, and multicultural.  Coming from a November that was coldish, snowy, and somewhat inverted in northern Utah, the contrast was marked.  We had a nice two bedroom condo in a cute little neighborhood near a shopping center that included grocery stores.  

My husband worked here:  Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, at the Monash University location.  He also attended a conference at Melbourne University, which has a beautiful campus north of the Central Business District.  

Our first weekend, we headed northeast out of the city to Healesville Sanctuary.  One of my goals for this trip was to get to know the Australian native creatures.  And they were all wonderful!

Healesville had a bounty of space, and the animals were living in natural settings.  (okay, now I am going to try my first picture in a diary).  Well, maybe I will try pictures in the comments !  

This Echidna is one of our world's extremely interesting monotremes - an egg-laying mammal !  

Hope you are all having a nice Saturday night at home, and I will eeek, now publish.  This is my third diary, so please be nice!  (I will undoubtedly say this when it is my 100th diary)  :-)