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
The Chocolate Factory
Yum!!!
Sleepy Koalas
And other species...
That was quite a good holiday!!
3 comments:
Hey!! This is great men! :) Can see that you had a marvellous holiday! :) I checked out some pics of Fairy Penguins and they are sooooo cute! :)) It must have been an awesome experience to witness that ! :) Thanks for sharing the pics! :)
Yup it was really nice, inspite of having to sit patiently for more than an hour in the cold sea breeze!brr! well it was worth it.
They came in their thousands, but not all at once, in batches of about 20-30.
We got a very up close and personal look at them when we were walking back from the beach area. There are boardwalks made for people to walk on so that they don't cross the penguin's area, and the penguins were walking right beside (inches away) from the boardwalk, and people actually got the chance to walk alongside them. The kids were thrilled!!!
Funnilly enough they didn't seem to mind hundreds of inquisitive humans along with their screeming children were walking inches away from them.
I've seen videos of this Penguins Parade, which is quite famous. Nice to know you've 'been there and done that'now!
Post a Comment