The Phillip Island

The Easter gave us a chance to take a break from our busy schedules and dash out to Phillip island, which is a small island (literally small...only 26km across at its furthest) just off the Australian mainland. Even though it's an island, it's connected to the mainland by a bridge which made it a lot easier to be able to drive down.

The Penguin Parade

This is what Phillip island is famous for. Everyday at dusk little fairy penguins (The smallest species of penguin in the world) would return home from a day fishing at sea and make way across the shore to their burrows. So we all gathered at the beach where this spectacle was to be seen. Just past 8 pm shiny white bellies started appearing at the edge of the waves and started making their way slowly ..cramming their necks and doing the swaying back and forth penguin walk! Cute!!

But it takes quite a lot of patience to observe this parade, for little penguins are very very scared of potential predators like Sea-Eagles. The funny thing is by the time penguins come ashore the sea-eagles would be safely asleep in their nests, but little penguins don't know that, and every time an inquisitive sea-gull flies past all of them would turn back and run towards the waves.

Unfortunately no one's allowed to take any photos, because the camera flash would temporarily blind the little penguins.

Working Horse festival

We were in luck! this festival took place right on the weekend that we were there.

Met some very interesting characters and societies..

hee haw...



The Chocolate Factory

Yum!!!

Sleepy Koalas

And other species...

That was quite a good holiday!!

Cricket at the G!

Ok, so this is a long overdue post, 7 days overdue in fact.

We went to see the cricket match between Australia and Sri Lanka, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground also known as the MCG, and yet again known as "The G".

SL were batting first and apart from a couple of exciting shots from Jayasuriya, (who decided to get back to the pavilion in a hurry) the first session was quite ehh.....boring.

Coming out to play

We would have fallen asleep if it wasn't for the "illegal" Mexican wave that kept going around the stadium. Yes, the Mexican wave is banned in Australia. But that didn't stop some enthusiastic Aussie fans from keeping it going. And every time the wave was 'flowing' through the crowds there would appear a message on the giant screen

"The Mexican Wave has been banned from sporting stadiums, persons who are found starting the wave will be evicted from the ground"

Funnily enough this seem to only add to the enthusiasm! Thankfully nothing really drastic happened, however towards the end of the match it was evident that there was a huge decrease in the number of people in that stand.

Another one bites the dust

Anyhow, Sri Lanka put up a score of 221 and Australia came out to bat, we were expecting a 'murder scene' but pretty soon things started to turn around when the Aussie batting line-up came crashing down. Things got a bit exciting at the end where there were still 2 overs to be bowled and Aussies needed about 12 runs (I think) and it was their last wicket which the SL bowlers were having trouble getting through! This is where Jayasuriya came to the rescue and bowled out Brett Lee who was itching to hit some big shots.

Yeeeah!!!!

'The G' at dusk