I’m stretched out in the brilliant mid-morning sun currently flooding my friend’s backyard. Can’t believed I missed the first day of my first ever Southern Hemisphere Spring (Wednesday), but I’m making up for lost celebration now. My first few days in Melbourne didn’t feel very Spring-like, and I couldn’t put my finger quite on why. I realized after some time that for one thing, nearly all native Australian vegetation is evergreen, so there’s not the dramatic starkness of an Upstate NY winter. And secondly, because Spring for me necessarily means melting snow: a liquefying cloak of the landscape drizzling through muddy courses to ice-jammed rivers. Here there’s rain, but not the Vernal Equinox transformation from gingerbread-house frosting to brown squishy terra.

Why hello again, Melbourne.
It’s a Friday morning, and in some circadian shenanigans my body decided six AM was an appropriate weekend hour to get up. After a few futile minutes of staring at the ceiling trying to let sleep again take me, I begrudgingly decided to maximize this early start to the day. Oolong with Tasmanian honey in hand, I step out into the cool morning air and walk the five minutes from where I’m staying to the Seaview ‘shops.’

A long enough Hawaii stopover to get in a bit of tropical adventuring before buckling up and scooting the last 16 hours of travel time toward Melbourne? Sign me up! I wasn’t able to get out exploring outside of Waikiki as I’d [over-ambitiously] hoped, but I’d still rate the experience as a successful attempt to maximize my short stint on Hawaii’s most populous island.