Melbourne - Philip Island, Victoria

We woke up early that Wednesday morning and moved all the stuff we had planned to bring on our road trip into the trusty old 19 year old car. The car may be old, but it had a lot of heart in it still. We brought tons of things, food that Sara’s Aunty had cooked for us, canned food, sleeping bags, picnic mats, a small gas stove, a frying pan, a pot, a huge bottle of water, clothes and tons more. As we left, Uncle and Aunty joked that it looked like we were moving houses.

Ally drove the first leg of the journey as we headed out of Melbourne and our eyes were sighted on Philip Island. The journey was not long at all, and we reached there slightly over 2 hours, but we had decided to spend the night as we wanted to see the Penguin Parade which was only at night. We stopped at the beach for a short drink then checked into our beautiful 2 bedroom cabin.

We had time to kill before the Penguine march, and thus we went exploring the beautiful Philip Island. First on our list of places to go was the Koala Scantuary. Admission was 10AUD per adult, and as we entered at first we struggled to see a live Koala, as they lived high on the Gum Trees, but soon enough we learned how to spot them, and not long after, we even saw a few fellas at eye level. They were beautiful fuzzy creatures who seemed to spend all day sleeping in the trees.

We explored a little more, and went to the the southern most tip of the island which had an amazing view of the ocean. We tried to find swan lake, but that was kind of a disaster and then finally it was Penguine time.

Once  we were on the Penguine terratory, no photography of any kind was allowed. We were ushered onto the beach, where we sat on benches, surviving the cold wind. Announcements where made in several languages on proper conduct, and apparently penguines only bite Chinese people, as the Chinese Instructions stressed ,”Its Illegal to touch the penguines, they bite people”, while in English and Japanese no such instructions were given.

Not long after we waited the little fellas appeared. The landed on the beach, got into a line, making sure each member of their family was there and then they made a mad dash towards the cliffs and back to their burrows. It was an amazing sight to watch! They were soo cute. One of them would lift their wings as a sign of danger, and the whole parade would stop till the guy at the front would put his flaps down.

We finally left the beach, cold and hungry and finished almost all of the nice food Aunty and Uncle had preapred for us to bring on our road trip. Day one, over.

On this day in History..

• Of Floating Markets, the River Kwai and Tiger Temples - 2006
• The Market Experince - 2006
• Lunch at Marmalade... - 2007
• Waipengs New Hair Do - 2007

Tags: Australia, koala, penguines, philip island, Travel

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