First dinner out in Australia

We purposely slept in a little bit this morning. We had been fairly late getting to bed on Sunday night, plus we wanted to wait until after the morning Melbourne traffic had died down a bit

So it was almost 10:00am before we hit the road.

We didn't really have that far to go, but with the urban route we had to take, we figured things would be slow going. In reality, we actually did better than expected.

We did a little freeway driving.

What's that? 

Well, it's blue sky and sunshine! Without any clouds!

We made our way to the Kangaroo Ground Memorial Tower. 

The tower is located on top of a hill, so the views are really good.

Pretty clear views of downtown Melbourne. 

And looking north.

We wanted to find somewhere for lunch and to go for a hike and I saw a park on the map that showed some trails and a parking area.

We headed over to the Sugarloaf Reservoir Park.

The water level looks really low.

Kangaroos!

Relaxing in the sun.

The dam.

The water level looked really low to us, but maybe it's like this every year at this time. Turns out that it was at 45% capacity. It hasn't been full since 2006, but it has been as low as 10% in 2009. So it fluctuates a lot.

We walked about 6.5 kms (4 miles). Beautiful blue sky day, with the temperature about 14C (57F).

This fellow wasn't shy at all!

From there, we headed to the town of Healesville where we had been invited by blog readers Mary and Adam to spend a couple of nights.

Vineyard scenery.

Scenery along the way.

More scenery.

Monday's drive, 93 kms (52 miles).

We got there and got ourselves set up. Mary and Adam were both still at work, but they had given us the code to get into the house and said to make ourselves at home until they arrived at the end of the day.

They have a nice backyard and lots of birdlife that visits!

Adam arrived first and it was fun talking about the birds.

Kookaburra.

There is a group of 7 that frequent their backyard.

Adam can even feed them.

Kukaburras are meat eaters. Never would have thought that. In the photos above, he is feeding them ground beef!

They also have a pair of Australian King Parrots that visit regularly.

Mrs., and Mr.!

We then had our first meal out in Australia! 

Mary and Adam belong to a travel club called Servas. It's actually been around since the 1940's so I'm surprised we had never heard of it. Anyhow, they were getting together for a local gathering and invited us to go along.

Nice to meet everybody, and of course they are all travelers so it's easy to have something in common. Most of them older people, thought the group caters to all ages.

Dinner was good. I had a beef salad (it was huge!) and Ruth had Mediterranean Risotto. I had a beer and Ruth had a glass of wine. Total cost was $50 AUD ($46 CAD, $35 USD). Not bad.

We've been here four weeks today and that's the first meal out we've had.

Tomorrow we're just going to find things to do that are walking distance from here. The weather forecast looks good again!

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