Philip Island

Day two in Melbourne was mostly about penguins. Not far from Melbourne is the small Philip Island famous for the penguin parade. We decided to book an organized tour since the island isn't really accessible via public transportation and we didn't want to hire a car.

The tour bus picked us up around 10:45AM and we drove around Melbourne for a little while picking up the other passengers (we were the first pick-up for our tour). The first stop was a small wildelife park where we could buy animal food for a AUD$1 donation. The park had all sorts of Australian animals like tasmanian devils, koalas, wallabies, kangaroos, dingos and a wombat. Most of the animals were pretty tame so we were able to go in the pens with everything but the tazy devils, dingos and wombat.

The kangaroos were the most friendly and forward about taking the food from you.

Next stop was a beach/park for lunch where the tour company provided pre-made salad rolls (basically what we would call hoagies or sandwiches on a bulky roll in the US). The rolls weren't anything to write home about but they were edible.

We then made our way onto Philip Island where we stopped at a beach that would have been much nicer if it were sunny and warm. The beach was still pretty nonetheless.

Finally we made our way to the wildlife park to see the penguin parade. Our tour operator provided tea, coffee, and cookies when we arrived which was a nice relief from the slightly frigid weather. The park consists of a few buildings and then a large cement grandstand on the beach. After sitting around for about a half hour sipping our tea and waiting for it to get dark we heard a brief spiel from a park ranger. She talked about the penguins and what we were going to see. We were also told throughout the day that there would be no cameras allowed during the penguin parade. The ranger explained that this was because the penguins are fairly sensitive to light and we didn't want to scare them.

Now let's talk about the "little penguins". I'm not sure if this is their official name or what, but that was what they are called. Apparently years ago these penguins used to be called fairy penguins, but no more. This things are tiny probably no more than a foot tall. If you can just picture any penguin you have any seen in popular culture and then miniaturize it.

Every evening right around dusk the penguins make their way from the ocean into their burrows on or near the beach. Some of them walk one to two kilometers to their burrows. There are hundreds of them and they are adorable. Imagine waddling one or two kilometers if you had legs that were just a few centimeters long. Right around 6 PM the penguins started showing up on the beach and then they just kept coming. They seemed to stick together and rush quickly across the open portions of the beach that weren't covered in seaweed or rocks. I was thinking they probably stayed together and traveled over the uncovered areas quickly because of predators but a ranger later told me they don't really have any predators on land. After watching them waddle their way across the beach we made our way back up towards the buildings where they had walkways right along where the penguins would walk to their burrows.

To be honest the whole experience at first felt somewhat unnatural, obtrusive and forced but the penguins really didn't seem to give a damn. I talked to a ranger after most of the penguins had made their way to their burrows and she told me that all of the penguins we were seeing that night had been viewed by humans their whole lives so they were used to us. The ranger told me that in other penguin colonies humans would have to slowly introduce themselves and let the penguins get used to them if the penguins were to be observed without getting spooked.

All in all it was a pretty amazing thing to see. The penguins are really tiny, there are hundreds of them and they just go about their business as if there isn't a massive structure built around their burrows with loads of humans ogling them.