Phillip Island and the smallest penguins in the world.

Oct 16th Part3

Phillip Island and the smallest penguins in the world.

Phillip Island is beautiful!  The tour guide Gavin was great.  It was as if your Uncle was showing you around. He had the typical australian accent, you know the thick one like Croc Dundee has?  One portugese guy on the tour said that he could understand my english but that he had trouble understanding Gavin’s.  He laughed pretty hard when I said I had trouble with Gavin’s english too.  I’ve had an interesting time so far figuring out what auzzies are saying because of thier accents and the different words they use.

The group I was with for the tour was a comfortable small number, only 10 people including me.  They were…one nice German lady, a nurse from just outside of Munich, a quiet but fun 28 year old girl from Korea who worked as a nurse but was looking for a new career, two fun girls from Finland who were here studying for two months in a different part of Oz and were on a holiday, a nice french guy from London who is a cook in a hospital, a married couple from italy (she’s Italian he’s Portugese) and two girls from Japan.  It made for a very diverse but fun group of people.

The tour started by visiting a small animal conservation area (basically an australian petting zoo).  We had lunch and got to see a Koala up close, I fed it.  Then we got to the good stuff!  I got to hand feed a Kangaroo!!!  A wallaby actually (small kangaroos).  But it was so much fun.  We also got to see Tazmanian Devils, Dingos, Emu’s etc.  I loved it.  Oh and they had  pirate ship mini golf course that I was dying to play, but we didn’t have time.

The tour continued and we went to a pier in a town called Corinella.  Our tour guide was looking for an old seal lion that used to be there but he wasn’t anymore.  It was a nice look out and we took a group photo and chatted with the local fishermen.  We continued to a beach that I can’t remember the name of at the moment.  It was beautiful and there were two guys from the Billabong surf team taking advantage of the big waves.  It as fun to watch.  I took lot of photos there.

The tour continued and we went to a place called “The Nobbies”, which is where we were supposed to see seals, but there were not any.  We did see hundreds of Seagulls though.  It was interesting because they had made their home along the boardwalk that we walked on and they were guarding thier baby Seagulls.  The little ones were cute and al of them were maulting (loosing their feathers).  The view from the boardwalk was incredible.  The sun had just started it’s decent and the waves were crashing on old exposed lava rock.  I took much too many photos ;)

We continued to a pizza place and I had an awesome hawaian pizza with heaps of sliced ham, enough that it was about an inch thick!

The sun was setting so we got back into the minivan/small bus and made our way to the Penguin Parade.  I wish that I was able to take photos of this place.  But I wasn’t, not even when the penguins were not there.  But the sunsetting on this beach was incredible.  Like something straight out of the movies.

The Fairy Penguins, which are the smallest in the world, started to come on shore around 8pm when the sun was almost set.  They are only as tall as the length from your wrist to your elbow and they had a super cute waddle.  One or two would come ashore and then return to the water as if to get their friends.  They then travel in groups to their burrows on land to feed their young.  The first group I saw was of four penguins.  Then they all started appearing.  It was like the scene in that early 80s movie “The Last Unicorn” when the Unicorns are freed from the ocean and all appear on the waves and escape from the ocean.  Well these little guys would slide or waddle out of the water in groups of 20-50 at a time and make their journey across the sand and rocks to the land.  It was awesome!  I bought some post cards to show everyone what they look like.  I’m not sure how many penguins we got to see, but they had 422 of them the night before.

That concluded our day and we returned to Melbourne.
It was an awesome day and one of the most fun tours I’ve ever been on.
Worth every penny!

– Bonnie :)