Celebrating the Coming of Spring

Spring has finally arrived! Gone are the days where you have to "bungkus" yourself in multi layered clothing even indoors. But then soon we'll have to brace ourselves facing the scorching hot sun of summer in Australia.

Well, till then, we've decided to first celebrate Spring. So today almost everybody in Bundoora join the trip to the Tesselaar Tulip Festival in Monbulk, Silvan, Victoria. It's about an hour and 15 minutes drive from Bundoora. I have always thought that I had to be in Holland in order to enjoy tulips, so having a chance to actually see them while I am in Australia is actually unbelievable.


The weather was great today, slightly sunnier than the week before. This week's theme at the farm is the Turkish Weekend. So we get to see some Turkish performances and souvenirs sold by some of the booth there.

The thing about the farm is, it opens its door to public only in Mid September to early October every year. So the time range is rather limited, mostly I think is due to the weather and the life span of the flowers. Unfortunately, we all did come early this time around, because some of us are going back to celebrate the Eid (isk..isk...isk, sedih nak balik jugak), so although the flowers were beautiful, most was not in full bloom yet or mere buds, hence less panoramic view. And posing under the hot sunshine, during Ramadhan was not really enjoyable and "photogenic" enough (that and the thought of meeting my Supervisors on Monday). So we thought that we definitely have to come again, maybe towards the end of my studies.

We later also dropped by Emerald, about 20 minutes drive from the tulip farm to see Australia's century-old steam train "Puffing Billy" which is still running on its original mountain track from Belgrave to Gembrook in the scenic Dandenong ranges. We did not board the train cause it's rather expensive and we were basically out of steam due to too much pose exposed under the sun at the tulip farm.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures. Some more is in the slide show...