Day 141 - Phillip Island, Penguin Parade

I've realized how I miss having my own room. I was awakened unwillingly at around 7:45am by 2 girls who refused to wake up quietly. It wasn't like they woke up and accidentally made noise. It really took effort to make the amount of noise they did like slamming lockers and talking on their cell phones.

I went down to town hall around 10:30am to catch a tour bus for the Penguin Parade on Philip Island.

Our first stop was at Maru Wildlife Park where you can touch and feed most of the animals. The only thing you're unable to do here is touch the koalas as it is illegal in this state to touch them.

From here we crossed over to Phillip Island to Woolamai, the world famous beach with great views of the ocean. Absolutely beautiful and seemed like it was out of a movie. The rock formations and the minerals in them have created a marbleized effect with blacks, browns and greens. It was stunning. Pictures really can't capture how beautiful it was.

Our next stop was at a place called Pyramid Rock. Which surprisingly, yes, is shaped like a pyramid. Beautiful yet again.

The Nobbies center on the island is a great place to spot seals and penguins. Unfortunately I saw a bunch of dead birds. The Little Penguins are indeed quite small, only about 30 cm high, tops. The view was amazing from here. It was really hard to see any seals because they were so far away, but at the visitors center you could pay $5 and get a live feed and print out photos. There were hundreds of seals sunning themselves on the rocks. I don't think I've ever seen so many. They blanketed the rocks like moving rugs.

We arrived at the penguin parade quite early around 8 pm and had front row seats on the beach sitting on foam mats drinking tea and eating biscuits while awaiting the penguins to come ashore. Photos were not allowed here as the flash freaks out the birds. It wasn't until about 9:30pm that a couple of penguins started to arrive. The birds usually stay in the water together and wait for others to arrive before getting up on the beach to their burrows. A few lone rangers were to tired to wait and went ashore along running all the way to their burrows. The largest group I saw was about 12 penguins congregating in the water and running ashore together. In total I saw 17 penguins which was kind of disappointing because I was expecting hundreds. But approximately 100-300 come ashore every evening at 5 different sites over the course of hours which explains the 17 I ended up seeing at my one site for an hour. I ended up leaving the beach and to look around at the nesting sites to see the penguins socialize. It was totally worth the experience.