Night of the Little Fairy's

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Day 109


Up early again today and sitting in the camp kitchen typing the blog, we had had our little visitors last night, the bread was gone and the bag was ripped open. Caroline and myself had watched these two black blobs tip toe into camp as opportunist thieves, they obviously didn’t have to try to hard to find the little stash of food we have left them, not out of kindness, or entrapment but more out of our own curiosity.

I had got a couple of mugs of tea in before Caroline wandered over and had type around 1500 or so words.

Morning time is my most creative, so it is the best time for me to do the blog where as Caroline is better in the evening.

I wandered off for a shower victorious in the knowledge that our raiders had not dispatched the rest of our breakfast, so finally it was going to be Toast and Marmite this morning.

I stopped to talk to Richard Cordukes, who we had talked to last night and I got in to conversation with him, he was packing up this morning leaving to go to Wynyard, as there is more for him to do there. I started to give him a hand as it would take us half the time and I could see some things were more difficult than others being in a wheel chair.

You just had to admire this guy, travelling around Australia is hard enough, but on his own and in a wheel chair, credit to him, like I have said before he has been travelling for just over 8 months at the moment.

I took some photo’s of his tear drop caravan, a little peach it was, but piling all the gear Richard had was a trial in itself. My exact words to him "F*+k me Richard you've got more gear than my missus", I never seen someone travel with so much gear.

When one of the guys from the site had arranged to help Richard we had cracked a lot of it out already, so left them to it, as It was nearly 11.00 o’clock and we wanted to get out or the rest of the day and I knew he would be OK as most of it had been done.

We had decided to got and see the “Nut” up in Stanley, a huge rock that you can walk up or around for one’s pleasure don’t you know. Our route out was the pretty one via Penguin, Burnie and Milton and so on, it was a dullish grey windy day here in Tasmania. We followed a sign to Table Cape Lighthouse, and got out to take some photographs, it was blowing an absolute Hoolie.

I honestly hate this weather !!!

Two hundred yards from the lighthouse was a scenic look out and the views were quite stunning looking back over fantastic coastline.

We stopped at a roadside pull in to eat our sandwiches and on the horizon in front of us it was getting darker and darker and darker, even though we had only 50K’s to go we decided it was stupid going on as it was know raining and as black as your hat, and when we finally arrived at our destination there would not be that much to look at let alone have a walk, so we chose to cut our loses and turned around and headed back in the same direction as we had come.

The weather in front of us was blue sky and sunny, and by the time we got to Burnie it was fairly warm, we needed to up load the blog for the day before, ”Our Daily Bread” whilst having a coffee and Caroline said to me, "do you think we are doing enough to fill our days?" "Certainly" I said this travelling lark is harder than having a full time job, I think there is a skill to it, because you have to do so many things, its not just packing a suitcase and going from A to B but so much more everyday and we don’t have any control over the weather.

We got back to camp, relaxed for a little while and decided on our next plan of action. We had planned a hot chilli the night before and now we had unfrozen the mince were going to have to use it and so with an early evening meal could go out and see if we could see Penguins in the evening.

With everything cooked, washed up and put away, we had asked the lady on the camp site where the best place was to see Penguins, Lillico Beech, was her reply.

We headed out just before dusk, and found the beach about 15K’s down the road, it was a nature reserve and a couple of volunteers had turned up, to make sure the birds are not disturbed too much and give useful information to visitors.

Hazel, the lady volunteer said that this time of year was the quietist time of the year, most of the birds had already gone (Typical) but we may be lucky and as they are a very timid bird we would not see them until after dark. She also said that no flash photography could be used, nor torches, as the intense light frightened thse little birds, so basically when it was pitch black you may be lucky enough to see a Fairy Penguin sometimes known as the "little Penguin" because of their tiny size.

The best time of year to see these little penguins is September. It does depend on fish stocks, this has an effect on their mating. But be warned, if it is this cold in summer, I don't know what September will be like.

As dusk was setting in we saw one chick start to get closer to the edge of his nesting area and when fully dark he came right out into the open, we could only see when he volunteers used torches with a special red filter to soften the light, it was a very cool evening and I asked Hazel if we are in Summer time for Tasmania, "yes" she said "right in the middle" I looked at Caroline, “this is summer time?"

We saw 3 Fairy (Little) Penguins that are the smallest of the penguin family but apparently the noisiest.

We were told that we would be lucky to see the adult penguins, you do have to follow their rules so that the adult penguins are not to scared to come up and feed the chicks, if you do anything that scares the adult they will not come up and the chicks won't be fed. We waited for a long while but we could wait for several hours, we were happy to see the chicks

Getting back to camp, we set up our Possum bag again just for a giggle and went to bed.

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Photos

Tear Drop
Richard Coredukes fantastic Tear Drop Trailer

So much Gear
More than my wifes gear

The Back
The back of the Tear Drop

Outfit
Richards Nissan X-Trail

Table Cape Light House
All about the light House

Grave
The light House Keepers son passed away in 1888 aged 1 year and 2 months

View
Back towards Ulverstone

Fairy Penguins
Information Board on the Fairy Penquins

Lillico Beach
This is where the little Penguins cross the beach

Paddy Melon
This is a Paddy Melon Wallaby, No Honest it is, but it was dark

Night of the Fairy
This is the best picture we are going to get. Thi is a Fairy Penguin waiting for feeding.

Paddy Melon
There were two of these playing around by the penguins nesting area

Fairy Glimpse
This was the little fella edging toward the opening

Lillico Beach
at Dusk