Cold Rainforests, Phillip Island, and Penguins on Parade

Hey! Andrew and I just finished our last day of work this Friday! We said bye to all of the co-workers we had got to know well over the past 10 weeks. They were from all over the world including Iran, France, England China, Japan, Turkey, and India. Also we went down the winery to say bye to the Manager Nyall and get a couple of bottles from the award winning Waurn Ponds Winery. That night Shannon, Jen and two of their friends came down from Melbourne and our French friends from work had a last celebration in our awesome beach house in Jan Juc.

Andrew and I decided to make a trip around Port Phillip Bay in the Saab over a couple of days. We left before dawn on Sunday morning and first drove through Melbourne to the Yarra Mountain Range National Park. I think it took us about 3 hours or so to get there, so we arrived in Marysville around 8:30am. Marysville is a little ski town at the base of a ski resort on Lake Mountain, kind of like Banner Elk in NC. After a quick breakfast at the bakery in Marysville we drove into the national park.
The park was really fun to drive through with all the elevation changes and really winding roads. Either side of the road looked like a rainforest with a thick canopy and lots of dense green vegetation. It felt like we were in the Amazon except that it was only a bit above freezing outside. Right away while we were driving down one of the dirt roads, we saw this bird called a Superb Lyrebird ran in front of the car. This bird is like a mini peacock. It can’t fly and has bright colored tail feathers it can fan out. While we were in the Yarra Mountains we did a bunch great rainforest hikes along the streams of melting snow. We also went to this canopy walk way that was 15 meters from the forest floor floor.

After sunset we traveled down south to Phillip Island. Phillip Island is a small island with a population of about 7000 but a big tourist industry. People from all over go there to watch their weekly car races, hit up the swell-magnet surf spots, and most importantly to watch the world famous Penguin Parade. We started off the day checking out the waves at Cape Woolamai. It had some size but was kind of blown out so we didn’t sit around too long. Right beside the beach access there were a bunch of walking tracks along the cliffs. We walked down there and they turned out to be amazing!! The spot where the cliffs end is called The Pinnacles. There were towering rock formations surrounded by enormous completely smooth boulders. We scrambled down the cliff and walked on the boulders and took lots of photos. It was really cool because even though the rocks were huge, they had been rolled around by the enormous swell that comes through there until they became perfectly rounded.
After that we explored around the island a bit. We ate lunch on at Red Rocks Point and then headed down to another spot on the island called The Nobbies. Starting in October seals gather down at The Nobbies by the hundreds, but unfortunately we were a couple of months early. Right down the coast from The Nobbies is the Penguin Parade. Every night Fairy Penguins commute from the ocean to their burrows beside the beach by the hundreds. We got to watch them wash up in the surf in groups of 5-20 and then run in little clusters across the beach. They looked really funny; they only stand at maximum about a foot tall and struggle in the surf while they wait for more to join them before waddling across the beach. After they make their little excursion you can walk around this lit boardwalk and watch them hang out.

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