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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vectis Birder" data-source="post: 1465807" data-attributes="member: 43690">The trip list is coming on well. Today I took a tram - the tram network round Melbourne is excellent - from St Kilda to the Botanic Gardens and added a whole load of new birds, think I got around 20 new species. I haven't got the list to hand, it's upstairs (it's 0237 in the morning and I can't sleep - it's been like this for the past week, since I arrived in S'pore) but I'll post it next time I go online, probably in a few days time. The birds(s) of the day though was Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoo of which 12 were feeding in a tall tree, there were also plenty of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos around as well. This is how you should be seeing parrots - in the wild, not in some poxy horrible cage. That goes for all birds.The fitness fanatics were out in force in the Botanic Gardens too, seriously I have never seen so many joggers, cyclists or power walkers in one place in my life. I suppose that's part of the Aussie dedication to sports and, because they are so sport mad, I still find it hard to get my head around the fact that Australia is the world's fattest nation (up there with us and the USA?).I didn't see the penguins in the end, I was going to go this evening (they live under the breakwater here and emerge at dawn to go to sea and return at dusk) but the weather was appalling, torrential rain, and I didn't fancy a 15-20 minute walk in those conditions. I am hoping that I might catch penguins on the Wollongong pelagic trip next month, and I think there's a population of them in or around Sydney somewhere, too.If I fail to see any penguins this time, it's an excuse for a return to Australia one day...I should be on my way to Cairns via Sydney and Brisbane tomorrow night - all being well, that is. You are supposed to reconfirm your Greyhound bus reservation 24 hours beforehand and I forgot, for the Melbourne-Sydney part of the journey. Ooops. I'll phone them when the office opens at 8am and hopefully it won't be an issue. If it is an issue it'll be a waste of $60 which I paid when making the booking a few weeks ago and, worse, will bugger up my schedule a bit! I did check online and you can still book that journey, so fingers crossed Greyhound are flexible in this respect...Sorry there's no photos yet, but none of the public computers at the hostel or anywhere seem to have any image editing software so I can't resize them or anything.</blockquote>

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