Advertisement
Published: March 6th 2012
Edit Blog Post
We left Melbourne in the pouring rain. Tom Tom or Ken Ken as we now call it wouldn't pick up a signal but we both felt confident in which way we should go........ 20 minutes later, Ken Ken is telling us to turn around when possible and we headed back to the city. We love some of the names places have, every road and track is named, every river, stream, creek, drain also has a name. We had a coffee soon after leaving Melbourne in Kooweerup which is a great name. They call it Koowee for short. Our favourite creek was Poop Follow Me Creek, coffee wasn't on offer here but don't think we would have stopped anyway.
We were making our way to Philip Island famous for the Penguin Parade which is a natural event which happens every evening when the tiny little fairy penguins return to their burrows after a day fishing. We had been before and our lovely friends, Louise, Rachel and Beth had bought our tickets as a Christmas present. In the same area is the Koala Conservation Centre which we really enjoyed. Again we had been here on a previous visit but saw more koalas
this time. One was sitting on a ledge, so we could get up really close, one look at his claws put you off getting too close. They are so cute and you feel so lucky to see them and even better if they are awake as they sleep for 23 hours per day.
Talking to a ranger at the koala place made us decide to go for an extra special deal at the penguin parade where we join a behind the scenes tour to look at how they did the TV programme last year and go down to the skybox on the beach. It turned out that we were the only two on the tour with the penguin ranger all to ourselves, which was fantastic. We went up close to their burrows and nesting boxes. It is moulting season and when this happens they can't go out to sea as they loose the oil/waterproofing on their feathers. So these clever little things know when this is happening, get a belly full of fish so that they can survive for about 3 weeks, so we also got to see some of these who were emerging from their burrows at dusk
for a stretch. We went down to the beach and there is a small structure called the Sky Box looking out to sea, where they monitor the penguins each night with various studies going on. The most difficult being counting them all in. The night before there had been 1026. We have no idea how they manage to do this. Anyway, we had an interesting chat with the guy doing the counting and also showed us a little weighbridge some of the penguins go over so they can monitor their weight. Through his binoculars we could see 1000's of birds out to sea and he could also spot the penguins waiting for it to become dark enough to hit land. There are different sections the public sit in, quietly in low light (no cameras) and we had the best seats in the house. As it is getting dark, these smallest of penguins emerge from the sea usually in groups of 10 or 20 assessing if it safe enough to cross the beach to make their way to their burrows. Once on dry land they all know exactly where to go, some of them have their burrows quite a way from
the beach and struggle uphill for several hundred yards and they are just amazing to watch. They seem oblivious to all the people but we are above them and can follow them. Some were obviously ready for moulting and were so full of fish they could hardly waddle along and kept having to rest. It was a splendid evening and we loved every moment of it. The icing on the cake was being in this area as the sky was really clear with an amazing array of stars.
Next morning we went to Nobbies Point which is a beautiful spot on Philip Island, but it was so windy you could harly stand up. Then off to a wildlife park which was a big surprise as we were in with some of the animals, handfeeding wallabys and kangaroos both of which were so gentle. Col hand fed a wombat, he looked so cuddly but his teeth and claws were long (and you should have seen the wombat's!) There were dingos and koalas, emus and black swans (they don't have white ones in Aus) we didn't know what a Tasmanian Devil was and wish we still didn't. It is mating season
for them and they were fighting and screeching and had drawn blood.... horrible.
Drove on to Wilsons Promontory the most southerly point of the mainland. Beautiful scenery both bush and beach, in parts the trees had burnt in bush fires so there was quite an eerie grey black look to the trees. Making our way to Sale for the night, it was getting late and passing a field of cows, Col spotted something else which turned out to be 100's of kangaroos, they come out when it is getting dark, however as soon as we started to get out of the car, they were off! 100's of bums hopping away from us at tremendous speed with a load of bemused looking cows watching. Ken Ken had a bit of a hiccup and took us off down a dirt track to a chicken shed and then tried to take us there again. When we eventually found our motel and told the Italian owner, he went off into a very Latin tirade about their being two places in town with the same address and sat navs always take people to the chicken shed!
Deciding on a takeaway, we went to
the drive through liquor store for a bottle of wine, a good end to a good 24 hours (we did eat as well!)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.042s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0231s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
sue tompkins
non-member comment
Hi Sal and Col, your blog is bringing back great memories, we loved the Pengiun Parade and sat on the beach in the wind and rain but was worth it to see all those tiny penguins.