What tunnels?

Melbourne's a great city, but I felt like leaving it for a day to see some of Australia's famous coastline. I picked the Mornington Peninsula region to visit, since it was easily accessible by public transportation (it took a few hours, but the trip was well worth it). The drive down there felt a lot like San Diego, by the way, but it was still very impressive.



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I went to the visitor's center of Point Nepean National Park, my destination. I asked for some directions, and the park ranger told me that there was a 6km walk along the coastline to the fort.

"Wait, there's a fort?!"

Turns out that, despite a beautiful coastline, the main attraction was actually a fort that was build in the 1880's to defend Melbourne against whoever the 1880 Aussies were worried about. Who knew?

Nature, Schmature; I spent 2 hours crawling through underground tunnels!

The fort was based around two huge cannons that were intended to punctuate any invading ships (but, of course, never were). Here are the remnants of the cannon's shield.

But the scenery really was amazing.

Notice how the sky gets progressively more ominous in those photos. I got caught in a nasty thunderstorm 6km from the visitor's center. It also happened to be a Tuesday during the off season, so I was the only person walking though a huge network of tunnels. Semi-creepy, but fun.

I made it back to the hostel, and managed to book a cheap flight to Sydney. More in the next post...

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