Phillip Island, more penguins than people

Here’s where we spent Christmas… We spent 3 nights in one place to unpack & unwind from the long driving days.

The first day there, we took a really long walk (7 miles) along the beach, and up this point of coast.

The high coastline was really cool, with green areas – where some rare birds nest.

The point of the coast has really huge rock formations that are still changing as the wind & wave break them down – these rocks are 300 million years old.

The colors of the water on the other side of the point were unbelievable.

There were all kinds of wildlife, including birds (and a broken egg shell), lizards, butterflies, and a few animal skeletons… There were tons of animal tracks in the sand, too. We also saw these weird clusters of snails all over the plants.

That night (Christmas Eve), we went to see what makes Phillip Island famous – The Penguin Parade. There is a colony of Little Penguins (also called blue penguins or fairy penguins) that lives on the southwest corner of the island. They waddle out to sea every morning (pre-dawn) and waddle back to land every night, to feed their offspring. The (Department of Conservation??) has set up a raised, non-invasive viewing boardwalk around the colony, and the penguins walk right by to their nests. They are noisy and clumsy, and it is really cool to watch. The babies sit at the “doorways” of the nests and squeak/shout for their parents to return. About 1700 penguins return each night (it varies because some stay out at sea for a few days at a time).

Here’s Vince in front of his giant penguin friend… (it's not real).

No photography of any kind is allowed once you’re outside (heavily enforced), so we have no pictures of the penguins. These are from the Penguin Parade organization - but it looked just like this!

On Christmas, we took another walk, and then sat here and read our books.

Then we cooked ourselves a little feast including marinated beef roast, broccoli, sweet potatoes (or yams?? What’s the difference?) salads with avocado, rolls, and red wine. It tasted better than it photographed, I promise. And we weren’t taking our contacts out at the dinner table, that’s just a contact case that we used to hold salt & pepper while we’re traveling. We also had delicious apple pie a la mode (NOT homemade) for dessert.

Merry Christmas, and Bon appetite!