the local aquarium

well its official. i'm depressed...

sending lillian off has done in the fun of this trip to australia (for that whole story click this). now i just want to go home, but am stuck here for another couple of days.

i'd already wasted one of my key cheer up places here in melbourne trying to improve lillian's mood. the problem was now i needed a happiness pick me up. fortunately there was one place left. i'd kinda wanted to save it for another lillian date, but that wasn't going to be a problem now...

the melbourne aquarium. man do i love going to aquariums!

now the funny thing about this aquarium is it is basically just a bigger version of the last aquarium i was at, kelly tarlton's experience. as you'll see. which wasn't a bad thing. i really liked the auckland aquarium. as a bonus it had some extra things i'd never seen before (though it also didn't have penguins).

the first thing you see, was COOL AS! a cuttlefish. i'd never seen one before. ubber cool.

there was a real nice reef section, like in most aquariums... oooooh pretty

see!

hey i found nemo! (oh wait i've said this joke before)

i also snagged the best pic of a tigger fish i've ever pulled off (they're just so dared fast!).

a lion fish.

a real big primitive fish (didn't read the sign... silly me).

they had a real awesome jellyfish tank.

these crazy jellyfish that don't float. rather they just sit passively on the bottom catching their food.

they also had some neat spaceship looking "normal" jellyfish.

this HUGE fish tried to eat me through the glass.

a cute little lobster... er sorry, again as they call them here crayfish.

than there was this HUGE reef tank. full of all sorts of new reef critters i'd never seen before.

just like this big clam. i'd seen fossils of similar sized ones from the cretaceous (though they weren't the same shape).

this pretty pokey dotted ray.

speaking of pokey dots was a cool new shark, a leopard shark. neato.

a moray eel.

a sea snake! wow that was a very exciting first!!!

a monitor lizard. something i'd more expect in a zoo. if they had a mosasaur in here the lizard would have made some sense.

wow horseshoe crabs. its nice to run into another fellow living fossil.

hey now there is something i'm not surprised to see. a statue of a great white shark. seriously i need to start a business making these things. they're everywhere kelly tarlton's, the auckland museum, and te papa. i'd be stinking rich.

of course this was to let me know i'm entering the shark area.

just like at the auckland aquarium there were school sharks.

a dogfish.

some horn sharks, hadn't seen these before.

just like auckland aquarium there were underwater tunnels one could wander through and check out the locals.

emphasising the aucklandness of this aquarium was a bunch of sevengill sharks.

there were nurse sharks. i'd always wanted to see some.

well hanging out with the fish did cheer me up a bit.

a few more days and it was back off home to dunedin. for the first time in a really LONG time! funnily enough i wasn't going to be staying though.

my birthday present was a trip back home to canada. a place i also hadn't been to for an even LONGER period of time. yet i can't say i have a lot of questions about what that'll entail.