Saturday, March 10, 2007

Phillip Island

As you all know my friend Nadia from Paris is/was here in Australia and after her brother wedding and a couple of days in Sydney she came back and stayed the last couple of days with me. On Thursday I finally shuffled a couple of appointments and joined her for a day trip to Phillip Island, a must-see in Melbourne. It was very good to flee from my odd day-to-day business of studying, studying, and – you guessed right – studying. Phillip Island is known for its large Little Penguin colonies. These are the worlds smallest penguins. And, something I didn’t know before that tour, Phillip Island is the second biggest tourist attraction in Australia after the Ayers Rock!

Tasmanian Devil

We visited a wildlife park first, saw some wombats, roos, tasmanian devils, and koalas. Then we went on a lovely beach, usually the best surf beach on Phillip Island but the surf was way too big, so we “just” enjoyed this lovely natural spectacle and a good walk on the beach … Then we went to Seal Rock on the west coast of the island. Seals are supposed to be scattered all over that rock, in the water, just everywhere … well, non of us saw a single seal – probably they were hiding ;)

Phillip Island


And finally, we arrived at Penguin Parade. They built a stadium there for all the tourists to easy watch the penguins coming back from their daily food hunt. They come in groups of 10-15 surfing on the beach on a wave … usually suddenly one panics and all are running back to the sea … this happens for about 3 times and then they make their way across the beach (that’s the most dangerous part of their day). We watched them for a while in the freezing cold stadium and then we made our way along the wooden board walk where you can see them really close and finding their partner at their burrow. They are really cute and way smaller than you’d expect.

We had a great day!

Little Penguin
(not my picture because no photography permitted on site)

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