Ethan Dylan Siegel's Website

Welcome to Ethan Siegel's Website

May 6. We have been in Australia for a little more than a week and have seen and done quite a bit. We started out in Melbourne for four nights. Melbourne was a lot bigger than we expected, with a population of about four million. Thanks to the beautiful weather (high 70s and sunny), we spent most of our days walking around and exploring the many diverse neighborhoods of the city. We hit St. Kilda, a seaside neighborhood a few miles out of the city center. St. Kilda is full of shops and restaurants, and we walked around all day soaking in the rays and enjoying a weekend crafts market. We also spent some time in Fitzroy, a bit rougher neighborhood reminiscent of the Lower East Side, and also full of restaurants and shops. On our last night, we met up with the friends we met in New Zealand, John and Sue, and they took us for a great Malaysian dinner in their neighborhood in the suburbs of Melbourne. They go to the restaurant all the time, and the owner personally cooked us a lobster and ginger dinner that was out of this world. We lingered for a while conversing over after-dinner drinks and looking at John and Sue's pictures from New Zealand. Afterwards, they dropped us off at the casino and our good luck continued. The next day, we rented a car and hit the Great Ocean Road, which is a beautiful, scenic coastal road covering some of the distance between Melbourne and Adelaide. We spent three nights on the road, and stopped in several seaside towns. We spent the days hiking and enjoying the sights. The Great Ocean Road is full of things to do and see, and here are a few highlights from our trip: we took a hike through the rainforest and another to a waterfall, we saw a cool lighthouse at Cape Otway, took a small boat out to a really large seal colony at Cape Bridgewater, and went for a walk in the forest at Blanket Bay, where we were able to find some koala bears in their natural habitat up in the trees. The koala bears were incredibly cute, it's as simple as that. People say they are sometimes cranky if you wake them and that they will piss on you, but you would never know it by looking at them as they wrap themselves around the branches and sleep in the trees. They need eighteen hours of sleep a day, which is just slightly more than Lane needs. In addition to all of this, we also saw a ton of amazing rock formations off of the coast, in the Port Campbell National Park, carved out of sandstone and limestone by the ocean. The coast is pretty rugged out there, and in the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were 80 shipwrecks in a period of 40 years. I believe that's even worse than Amtrak. On our fourth night, we slept at Cape Jervis Station, a working sheep farm with wonderful and accomodating hosts. The next day, we took the ferry from Cape Jervis to Kangaroo Island, where we will be spending five days. Kangaroo Island is off of the southern coast of the country and is largely uninhabited and full of native wildlife. We hope to see Kangaroos, more koalas, sea lions and seals, wallabies and whatever else is out there. You can expect more Discovery Channel pictures in our next update. As you can probably tell, we're having an amazing time. We've been away for nearly two months and we're both healthy, happy and relaxed. We hope everyone is doing equally well back home. It's been great keeping in touch over the internet, and we'll talk to all of you soon.

Melbourne & Great Ocean Road

Melbourne at night from across the Yarra River. They have a pretty cool neon thing going on under the highway.

The tram runs through St. Kilda. Because of the trams, you actually make right turns from the left lane at some intersections, just like the taxis in New York.

We don't get many signs like this in NYC, eh? The snake warning is exactly how we like to start a hike. We've unfortunately seen that show on the Discovery Channel about the world's most dangerous snakes and how most of them live in Australia.

These pictures are from Teddy's Lookout, outside of Lorne on the Great Ocean Road. You can see the road as it hugs the coast.

The picture at the left is Erskine Falls, our next stop after Lorne. After that, we hiked in the rainforest at Mait's Rest, and Lane spotted this Picasso looking thing in the bark of one of the trees.

This is the lighthouse at Cape Otway. The shot above is the view looking straight down into the Bass Strait. The next piece of land to the south is Antartica, and to the west, South America. The picture of the lighthouse is for Lane's mom, Linda.

Our first koala sighting, at Blanket Bay. The trees were full of Koalas, once we figured out where to look.

These are part of the 12 Apostles, a sandstone rock formation.

Nothing famous, just pretty.

This is London Bridge. It looked a lot like the real bridge until the first part of it fell into the ocean. A couple of tourists were caught on the wrong side, but were eventually flown out by helicopter.

This is Cape Bridgewater. The views were spectacular and the seal colony is just around the bend. There were hundreds of seals and two different species.

The boat/raft in the distance took us to the colony so we could see the seals in the water.

Inside an enormous cave at Cape Bridgewater.

The water is so clear you can actually see the seal flipping below the water.

A sheep at Cape Jervis Station demonstrating why we are higher on the food chain.

Beautfiul Ocean Road sunset.

The same sunset a few minutes later.

On the ferry to Kangaroo Island.

We'll be on Kangaroo Island for the next few days, then we head to Adelaide for the weekend. After that, it's up to the Great Barrier Reef and a complete change of scenery, climate and activities. You won't have to see us in the same jackets any more. We send our best wishes to everyone and hope that you are all doing well. Drop us a line and keep in touch!