BurbleChaz

We had an elaborate plan for today, involving bicycles, lunch, and other virtuous things. What actually happened involved animals.

We wanted to hire some bicycles and do a bit of sightseeing around Melbourne, followed by a longer-range sortie in the car to look at some areas to live in. Due to various factors, including jet lag, breakfast and the overall Sundayness of the morning, we failed to be entirely ready to go at 0900 sharp. So we abandoned the cycling thing and went to plan B.

After some perusing of brochures and maps, we grabbed the car and bimbled gently eastwards along route 34 in the general direction of Healesville Animal Sanctuary. The Designated Driver (DD) found the first part of the trip, leaving Melbourne, considerably less stressful than the Designated Navigator (DN) did. The major cause of the DN's stress was, I suspect, the DD.

Anyway, we had a reasonably uneventful trip about 60Ks to the animal sanctuary. The DN did a fantastic job, and the DD did more than enough to keep the DN alert and focussed.

The animal sanctuary is a fantastic place. It's a huge area of natural forest, with various areas you walk through surrounded by howling, hooting, screaming young apes with their parents and pushchairs. Once our mental filters screened them out, we started to notice the wildlife. All the animals are native Australians. Koalas are cute but boring. Emus are elegant and graceful and look like a disapproving maiden aunt. Kangaroos spend most of their time chilling out and looking like they're waiting for a top-up of Pimms. One of the highlights for me was a fantastic facility they have inside a building. It's a complete, huge aquarium for platypus. We saw two of them swimming, diving and seeming to play. They were very active, and it was a joy and a privilege to see them in a (faked) natural environment.

We also witnessed what may be the only recorded instance of a wombat awake. They have a couple if common wombats (vombatus ursinus - how geeky is it to remember that?) When we first saw them they were (in separate enclosures) snoozing. No surprise there. Then, incredibly, one of them woke up, went for a stroll, rootled around and....went back to sleep. The other one was woken by its keeper, who entered it's area to do a presentation about them. It woke up, took one look at him, and ran (yes, ran - fast) as far away as it could get. Seeing as how he hand-reared it from an early age after its mother was run over, this seemed ungrateful, at least. The common wombat, however, is a solitary creature, and at around 24 months goes all teenage, starts listening to odd music, gets pierced and tattooed and eventually leaves home. This one was going through that stage. They plan to release it into the wild soon.

The excellent display of birds of prey was either enhanced or marred, depending on your viewpoint, by a magnificent wild wedge-tailed eagle turning up. Two of the birds scheduled to display flew, one of them reluctantly. They didn't try their captive wedge-tail, because it would have led to fighting and death, which upsets the children. The osprey, however, took of and hared away from the wild bird. The falconers explained that this wasn't through fear - the osprey, a female, was just doing a mating diplay. She's much faster than the eagle, and is disappointed when he can't keep up. Because it's early Spring here, she's been displaying to falcons, owls, ibises and, on one memorble occasion, a fish she had caught.

Then we drove home and discovered that:

• everybody goes shopping on Sunday
• some pubs don't open on Sunday
• the DN is a truly exceptional improvisational cook. Prawn stir-fry

Wine: Saltram of Barossa 'Next Chapter' 2004 Semillon Sauvignon Blanc. Excellent, deep yet crisp, rich, nutty, buttery.