Puffing Billy

Yesterday was our first full day in Melbourne and we decided to take the kids on a ride on Puffing Billy up to Emerald Lake. Puffing Billy is a lovely old steam train with open air carriages. As you can see from the photos, the kids, along with just about every other child and adult on the train can sit on the window ledges with their legs outside the window and hang onto the railings. I was a bit nervous about this on the way up the ranges but was a little more relaxed about it on the way back down.
The bushland up in the Dandenong Ranges is just beautiful and extremely steep. The Lake area at the top is lovely too with a beautiful picnic area up there.
This is definitely something I would do again on other trips to Melbourne with the kids.



Late yesterday afternoon, when we got home from the train, we drove down to the southern side of Phillip Island to see the Fairy Penguins come ashore to their burrows. It was about a 2 hour drive down there and back, so it was a very long trip for the sake of about an hour of seeing the penguins, but it was worth it when a little penguin actually walked right under the boardwalk at our feet. The kids thought that was pretty cool. Unfortunately I don't have any photos to record this because cameras are prohibited down there. Because the penguins are still wild, the effect of camera flashes frightens them.
The crowd of people down there was incredibly large and very difficult to walk back to the top of the dunes with the kids and not lose them in the crowd in the dark. Even Desmond, who goes there quite often has never seen a crowd there quite like that.
That's it for me tonight, but I'll be back again in a day or so.