Week 3 & 4: Adventure Time!

Lisa Schnitzler
Feb 3, 2019
4 min read

Hi! I've been so busy with work and adventuring I completely forgot to make a blog post last week.

Over the past couple weeks I have been working in the Office of Indigenous Education and Engagement with the Policy and Impact team. It has been really eye opening to see how the university functions at a strategic level, I am learning so much! RMIT is so ahead in terms of making reconciliation a commitment of action- rather than just a buzzword.

Last week, it was what some people call Australia Day. Everyone else refers to it as Invasion Day. Out of solidarity, I did not celebrate this holiday, just like I have come to not celebrate Canada day in the same way that I used to. Regardless, since this is a national holiday, I had a long weekend and decided to get out of the city to appreciate the nature of Victoria.

My host family and I drove out to East Warburton to see the red wood forest. When we got there we encountered a wounded fruit bat that had fallen out of its tree. It was so adorable and sweet, I couldn't leave it. We fed it some apple (without touching it) and moved it to a place it could hang in peace in the shade.

I spent about half of my time there with the bat, but it was well worth it! We walked down to the river and I took tonnes of photos of all of the foliage. I felt like I was in Jurassic Park!

I also went on a little road trip with my friend Monica to the Mornington Peninsula to soak up the sun and splash around in the Aussie ocean. We blasted the Mamma Mia soundtrack and brought life to the beach- seriously, other people were dancing to our music. This is a testament to the amazing-ness of ABBA.

This past week, I have been working a lot on establishing a fitness routine in my life. This sounds kind of boring but it has been really good for me physically and mentally! After a day filled with critical thinking and analysis its nice to just be outside and sweat. So far I have been doing 4 or 5 days on, 1 day off. The goal is to make fitness into a habit instead of chore. So far, so good!

On Saturday, I went on a day tour with Melbourne's Best Tour (I got a Groupon for only $90!). We went to Phillip Island and it was so worth the money. It was a small group of 7 people. We drove to our first stop, Maru Koala Centre. Honestly, I was pretty disappointed with this place. It is super small and the animals seem pretty contained like a zoo. I walked around for a bit but eventually just chilled in the café until we had to go.

The next stop was the Phillip Island Koala Conservation Centre. Now this place is where it's AT. You have the chance to walk through a huge acreage of eucalyptus trees where the koalas are chilling in their natural habitat. It is kind of like a game of hide in seek, but it is so rewarding once you see one of those little bubs in the tree sleeping! Turns out, koalas sleep for 20 hours a day. Tough life.

Our next stop was the Nobbies at the end of Phillip Island. This is the home to many seals, and many Little Penguins (actually their scientific name). The penguins are so. cute. The penguin conservation centre has built little boxes for the penguins to build their burrows. Currently, it is hatching/baby season.

These penguins do NOT mate for life, unfortunately they have a divorce rate of 15-30%. The parents alternate staying home with the baby while the other parent climbs a H U G E cliff and goes swimming for up to two weeks to get food for the rest of the family. When the penguins return, they call out to their pals in the water (sounds like: huk huk huk!) and they approach the shore at sun down together. They wait until it is dark out so predator birds can't catch them. Then, they get ashore and cautiously run across the sand to the cliff bank where they climb to their family. This is what I got to see. It was such an amazing experience I would totally recommend it to anyone coming to Melbourne.

As we walked back up to the penguin centre, we could see the little penguins running to meet their babies, and their babies yelling at mom and dad for food. I genuinely cannot express how beautiful it was.

A great thing about the Penguin Centre is that they are non-profit- meaning that all of the money from the ticket sales (2,500 a night at $40/person) goes back into maintaining the environment for the penguins, sea birds, and the humans! If there is one thing I learned during this experience is that balloons really suck for the envrionment. When you let them go/ or they get lost, they most likely end up in a seabird's tummy, which they feed to their young. Soooo... instead of balloons, blow bubbles!