Phillip Island Day Trip

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It's after midnight here, but I hate falling behind on blogs, so I have Rafael Nasal playing in the background as I type this after another very long day tour where we arrived back at our hotel around midnight.

We were able to sleep in today, as the tour didn't start until midday. We were both so exhausted from yesterday's tour that we welcomed the 9 o'clock start. After we got ready we went to the shopping centre next door to buy ourselves some new shoes. Walking shoes, so we were able to spend the hours walking around. We both knew what we wanted so it was only a matter of trying them on before we purchased them.

Then, back to the hotel to get our things ready for our day trip to Phillip Island. Phillip Island is connected to the mainland by only one bridge, about two hours south of Melbourne. It is home to a famous grand prix track, 10 000 residents, seals, and the biggest attraction - 30 000 fairy penguins. We were getting picked up at another hotel about 5 minutes away at 12, so we made the short walk to that location and waited.

And waited. We may have jumped the gun a little bit here, where we called the company at 12:01 to find out where our pickup was. We probably should have waited a little longer with the assumption the driver may have got held up. Anyway, after hearing that really was the case, it put our mind at ease, and the driver showed up at approximately 12:10. We made one more stop at another location and soon we were on our way to Phillip Island.

Our first stop, which was our lunch stop, was in a town called Tooradin. It is a coastal town and we stopped at a picnic area with some great views of a lagoon and some boats in the water. Our tour guide was a man called Duane, and our tour was with the company Wildlife Tours, which we think is also part of the Autopia company of whom we travelled with yesterday.

We were provided with some rolls for lunch, which were your typical food - ham, chicken, egg and salad rolls. We had about 45 minutes here, so plenty of time to look around the area. Before we moved on to our next stop, Duane did a bit of an introduction and we learnt that the people joining us on our tour were from Japan, Germany, The Netherlands, India, Wales, England and even Melbourne.

About 30 minutes away from Tooradin was the Marui Koala and Animal Park. It is a small park and consists of different types of Australian animals. However, the main attraction is the koala meeting. The tour covers the park entry fee, but for a small additional cost you can pay for a photo with a koala. We opted for this as - despite living in Australia - had never had this opportunity before. The koala we had out picture with happened to be more interested in his food, but it was still nice. We also learnt some new facts about koalas, such as their name comes from an Aboriginal word meaning 'no land and no water'. They were the first to discover that koalas diet consists only of eucalyptus leaves only due to the fact that they are poisonous to all other animals. This means that they have no competition for food, and they get all their water from the leaves as well so they don't have to come down from their tree. It was quite interesting.

Other highlights were the wallabies and kangaroos (you can feed them for $2, though we chose not to do that) and the dingoes.

Our next stop was Panny's Chocolate Factory. It is free entry into the shop and café, but to do a tour it is a $15 cost. It's a very interactive tour, where you have to chance to play games, create your own chocolate, and also learn about how chocolate is made. Only 5 people from our tour opted to do it, but it is probably worth the money spent just to see. Unfortunately, we arrived at the same time with two or three big tour buses, so it got very crowded, but we still enjoyed it.

Now that we were on Phillip Island, Duane took us to a popular beach called Woolamai Beach. This was very much a stunning beach, with waves and very clear water. Unfortunately we couldn't swim as we didn't bring our swimmers, but I dipped my feet in the shallow water. It was very pleasant, and I wish we had time to come back and spend an hour or two swimming there. It is a stunning location, and the water was warm as well!

Due to the request of some people, we did a short stop at the grand prix circuit. We weren't allowed onto the track, so our guide could only stop at a fair distance where we couldn't get a very good view. But he tried his best.

As our group were quite punctual with time, he took us to a bonus stop called Pyramid Rock. This was a lovely view of a bay around Phillip Island. It is named Pyramid Rock due to a rock that looks like a pyramid. We spent some time up here, which was lovely, and at this stage, rather warm.

Nobbies Beach is usually a place where you can see seals on the rocks below. Unfortunately, they weren't there today, but it was once again, a very lovely view of Bass Strait ahead. Here is also a souvenir shop and a café if you get hungry.

Finally, we reached the Penguin Parade, which is the main attraction and the focus of the tour. Once it gets dark, some penguins begin to come in from the water to go and sleep. The penguins can be out at see anywhere from a few days to four weeks, so they never know how many are going to come in each night. You take the risk when you go. We had dinner in the café and then made our way down to the beach and the viewing stands.

It was very crowded, and unfortunately you aren't allowed to take photos due to the health and protection of the penguins, but that didn't really matter. We sat with a couple on our tour from Wales. They were really nice, and we were able to have a good conversation with them while we waited.

They expected the penguins to come in around 9, but like everything with nature, they don't actually know. Luckily, the first lot did appear around 9. As they are nervous animals, they wait in the water until they have a small group and then waddle up the beach in small groups, which is really cute.

We were probably quite unlucky tonight, as not many came in from the sea, and as we had to be back at the bus, we were unable to watch a lot. But we did have one group come up right near us, plus we spotted a few wallabies hopping along as well.

The best part however, is walking back as the penguins' burrows are right near the boardwalk so you get up very close to them as you walk back. So we definitely saw a few on the way back, which was very nice!

We arrived back in Melbourne at midnight, and it is now past 1 o'clock in the morning. Tomorrow will be a quiet day!

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