What is the plural of Platypus?

I saw a kangaroo today!! Woohoo!! I can finally scratch that one off the list. Christine, Halley, Sarah and I went to the Healesville Sanctuary, which is a wildlife park in the Yarra Valley (wine country) an hour outside Melbourne. It's a pristine establishment and is supposed to be THE place to see all the cool Australian animals, such as: kangaroos, dingos, emus, wombats, tasmanian devils, platypus, in their natural habitat.

It almost didn't happen for a number of different reasons. The first and foremost being the pub crawl we executed the night before. After a many hours of drinking, rounded off with pizza at 12:30 AM and then a long walk home, we woke up well after the alarm and, needless to say, were not feeling too chipper. Dooh!

So, it was 8:45 and the bus was leaving from the La Trobe University campus at 9:45. That would be fine if not for the fact that it takes about an hour to get there! Dooh!

We hop out the door and get on the first tram which will take us to the second tram (crappy commute to La Trobe but that's another story). Everything is looking fine. We'll just ride the few blocks to Bourke Street, get off, take the number 86 to Bundoora and we're on our way. Wrong! It just so happens that the number 86 tracks in that area are under construction this weekend. Dooh!

At this point we knew the 86 had to be running somewhere on the line so we embarked on a brisk walk to find out exactly where this might be (while I silently wished I had read yesterday's paper which probably announced this construction in huge letters). 15 minutes and many blocks later we finally find a working portion of the 86 tram line. As we are standing there waiting for the next Tram to come we all have a moment to notice the state of our tired, disheveled, unshowered selves and decide to try not to think about it. A little lip balm, some cheap perfume (for the ladies of course) and we're on our way.

We finally get on a moving tram and take the long ride to Bundoora. We hop off the tram about five minutes past the bus departure and have a ten minute walk ahead of us. Dooh!

By the time we are a short distance away it is almost twenty minutes past the departure time and we are convinced we have missed the bus. We are casually walking and discussing our alternative plans when what do we see as we take the last corner (?) but the buses sitting there waiting for us! Sweet!! We hobbled on bored and slumped into the seats for the trek out to the park. Whew(!), we're exhausted already but our day had just begun.

We had a really wonderful time of which I won't drag you through all the details. All I will say for now is that the Sanctuary ended up being really beautiful, peaceful, relaxing and informative. I will post some pictures in the next couple of days with a few descriptions.

As usual, I found that it's always better to drag my butt out of the house for a good time no matter how tired I feel. If I hadn't gone I most likely would have watched a lot of tv and continued to feel tired. Thank you to my roomates for the motivation.

Ok, see you next post.

Eric