11th February - Geelong, Victoria, Australia

Geelong is a City about 45 miles to the south west of Melbourne.  Geelong is the second largest Victorian city behind Melbourne with an estimated urban population of 268,277.  Geelong is also known as the "Gateway City" due to its critical location to surrounding western Victorian regional centres including Ballarat in the northwest, Torquay, Great Ocean Road and Warrnambool in the southwest, Hamilton, Colac and Winchelsea to the west, providing a transport corridor past the Central Highlands for these regions to the state capital Melbourne in its northeast.

The modern name of Geelong, established in 1827, was derived from the local Wadawurrung name for the region, Djilang, thought to mean "land", "cliffs" or "tongue of land or peninsula".

During the Victorian gold rush, Geelong experienced a brief boom as the main port to the rich goldfields of the Ballarat district.  The town then diversified into manufacturing, and during the 1860s became one of the largest manufacturing centres in Australia with its wool mills, ropeworks, and paper mills.  It was proclaimed a city in 1910, with industrial growth from this time until the 1960s establishing the city as a manufacturing centre for the state,

 We were anchored off shore and had to be tendered ashore once we had finished breakfast. 

We were beginning to learn that most Australian cities and towns have Botanical Gardens, and Geelong was no different so we haed off to the east of the city to explore these.  Our walk took us a round a swimming area and it being Saturday it was very busy with families enjoying the incredible weather.

Another feature of the first few days we had in Australia was the trees, they were everywhere and quite spectacular.

Walking into the gardens we came across flower beds that were full of colour and where there were flowers there were butterflies.

This one a type of blue I have not been able to identify as yet.

There were a lot of Small Whites around the Lavender.

In fact the feature of the day were the streams of Small White butterflies that were coming in off the sea and covering the flower beds, it was a wonderful sight.

Spider webs were also strung across the beds and in the middle would be a dead leaf in which the spider would sit until something came into the web.

We were particularly taken with one flower bed that combined flowers with wonderful foliage.

 

A Southern Grass Dart, a type of skipper.

There were plenty of ferns providing shade and cover.

A Meadow Argus butterfly.

A Long-tailed Pea Blue.

The Botanical gardens were lovely and it was wonderful to have this injection of warmth, flowers and colour in February.

We left the gardens and headed into the city where there was a huge shopping mall that provided some welcome cool in the middle of the day.  Walking through the streets there were signs of the colonial past with houses with ornate iron work.  This house was built in Edinburgh and shipped out here at the end of the nineteenth century.

Ornate balconies and porches.

After lunch we made our way back to the ship by tender and we spent some time by the pool for the rest of the afternoon along with the constant stream of white butterflies.

Tomorrow is another day at sea, then a stop in Eden on New South Wales' Sapphire coast.