To the Tulip Farm and others

20th Sept 2008 Saturday

We were suppose to meet up early but I messed up and was late... Super lucky that I got friends to help talk to the driver and pick me up from Flinders Street. Thanks guys~!

The first place we went was... [squints at the fonts] Dandenong Ranges National Park.

There were 'wild' birds that hang around in this area where we can feed them but only the seeds provided.... Business is business I guess...

There was the naugthy cuckatoo..

And that Jaslyn with the Crimson Rosella...

[lol] Man Yee has two on her.
There was nothing much to worry about since the birds were pretty much used to eager tourist feeding them on practically a daily basis I presume...

This little guy is Australia King Parrot (at least I think it is) ^^;;

See~! All those birds flocked and eating the food. I would join them... if I was a bird. [grin]

You have no idea how hard it was to get the cuckatoo to land on you... So you can imagine our delight when the cuckatoo landed on any one of us..

Well... that was until the cuckatoo bit Jaslyn and myself... nothing too serious but still. Silly bird~! All we did was just feed them. There was a rule against touching them (which made sense since that would startle the birds)

But it's pretty nice to feed the birds. ^_^

I'll just put this photo of me having two birds... [gently tells the birds to go off]

So yea, after the bird feeding session, we were taken to a Hardy Gully Nature Walk. It's just a nature walk...

Nothing fantastic to point out here...

Though they did have little informational boards along the route.

There were just plants, trees and soil...

Guess I've been to quite a few nature walk / forest trails. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the walks. Very much in fact. Just saying it's nothing grand...

Though the one thing I found most fascinating was this warning sign. XD Now, if you replace the image there with an arm or leg, you'll understand why I found it fascinating..

After the little nature walk, we moved on to the next location. We stopped at the little town of Dandenong (I presume). It's cool that the house is named "Miss Marple's Tea House". ^_^
Just beside the tea house is a little patch of wild flowers. Though tiny, they sure are pretty...
There was this detailed sculpture of a granny and her husband enjoying tea outside a teapot shop.
Yea... A teapot shop selling teapots...
And lots of them.. In this shop they sell everything teatime;
from themed teapots... This one is themed frog.
Another look at the frog tea set.
There's a sweet one of a mother giraffe and her baby.. Or it could be a daddy giraffe and his son... [lol] There's not way for certain to tell the gender... at least I don't know. [snicker]
The little tea shop has won lots of Tourism Awards... Hehe. So it's really a very special tea shop.
I like pretty flowers...

We pranced into Geppetto's workshop like any good girl or boy...
To see all the puppet and all the toys...
Yoong Yoong even tried one for size. [grin] Technically we all did.. [lol]
There was a lovely glass window display with all the pretty girly things.
Man Yee bought this for her parents. A set of english tea leaves.
I was really excited to be heading off to see some colourful tulips. These ones are even for sale.
But because it was raining and we only had 2 umbrellas between the 5 of us... we decided to have lunch before venturing out in the cold.. I had egg sandwich and Yoong Yoong gave me half of the black forest cake she's eating here..
I really do like flowers in general.
Just look at the pretty white tulips...
Here's the girls in the field of tulips.
[snicker] Man Yee was standing pretty far from me when I asked her to turn and look at the camera. So I took some faraway shots...
Some near shots...
Some overview shots...

And some closeup shots...
In this shot, you can see that it's raining... if you look closely that is [grin]

There was other things to see, like this music organ...
But my attention were lovingly drawn to the colourful flowers.
Look~! Daffodils~! [happy smile]

Oh. A blood red Tulip. Very interesting indeed.
If you don't fancy blood red, there's also soft pink for your viewing pleasure.
Gosh, there's a whole myriad of colours to select from really...
There was even a dutch clothings show.

And with people in costumes, there will be dancing~! [grin]
Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, here at the tulip festival.
We even bought some tulips to bring home. I got a white tulip since they didn't have the blood red one. Actually my eyes were pretty much fixed on getting the white one... [lol]
I like how shocking purple these flowers are...

I even tried to video them... [lol]

[grin] Here's a photo of Man Yee in the little "bus" we were travelling in (it's more of a van really...)

I even took a photo of our "bus" driver, Ping.
After all the pretty flowers, we headed to our last destination of the day. A Vineyard.
It's really a lovely day...
We came here to do some wine tasting...

Though I have drank wine before, it was an interesting experience...

There were so many that we tasted... Chardonnay, Ned's Red, Dessert Wine, etc...

All in all, I had a great time with the girls and Wilson (Man Yee's younger brother)

I even spotted a spiderweb and did some experimental photography with it... [lol]

The moment I got home, I hurriedly unwrapped my white tulip and borrowed my housemate's vase (really need to get this kind of vase {so handy~!}) and did some more experimental photography with my white tulip.
Happy day~! Cheers~!