Phillip Island

This weekend we finally made it to Phillip Island! This place has been on our "to do" list since before we left Canada - ever since Jen read an article in a travel magazine about the Little Penguins that live on the island, and how you can watch them come in each night from the ocean. So it was about time that we finally got to go and see them ourselves.

We rented a car for the weekend and when we went to pick it up, we were in for a pleasant surprise - we got a Toyota Prius hybrid. Very cool car. I like that it has an "on" button instead of a key. The "key" that we have for it is totally square and gets inserted into the dashboard before you can turn the car on, but there's no actual ignition like in a regular car. Jen and I took one look at our ride, turned to each other, and said (almost in unison) "Now that's a slick car!"... so that became the car's name - Slick. Once you've got it started, driving the Prius is pretty much like driving any regular automatic car - except that of course when the electric engine is being used, the car is very, very quiet. So it's equipped with a beeper for when it backs up - otherwise, you'd never hear it coming!

The drive out to Phillip Island wasn't all that remarkable, and in fact the first part of it was more than a little annoying, because there is no ring road around the eastern side of Melbourne. We had no choice but to cut right through the city for many kilometers before we could pick up the highway on the far side. (OK, let's be fair - this was also partly because Jen and I flat out refuse to pay for a toll road, which would have been another option.) The scenery on the way out wasn't all that exciting either, but that lack was more than made up for once we'd got to the island.

Phillip Island is one of two islands in Western Port Bay, which is one bay over from Port Phillip Bay, where Melbourne is. We drove over the short bridge at the one end of the island and there we were! We stopped in briefly at the visitors centre to purchase tickets to the "Penguin Parade" (more on that later). Janet purchased the cutest stuffed penguin ever! Jen and I kept shooting it envious glances, but decided to wait for now.

The next stop was the island's chocolate factory. Now, I must admit, when I first learned that there was a chocolate factory on the island, I was hoping that it would be something like the Hershey's factory back home, with the huge industrial chocolate production and the awesome store. Not so much here. This place was a small, family run business, and while you could look through a window and watch the chocolates being made, there was no tour or explanation or anything. The shop did have a wide variety of chocolate bars and other goodies though, and I picked up a few for my brother, who's been helpful beyond all measure these past few months with my websites and everything. So yes, Dave, the long-promised chocolate is in the mail - or it will be, tomorrow!

Afterwards, we drove to the tiny town of Cowes on the northern end of the island, where our hostel was. Let me tell you, I was NOT impressed with this hostel. The YHA was full so we ended up at the "other" place. Basically it was a renovated shed in the owner's backyard! Actually, when we pulled up to the front of the hostel, I thought that we had the wrong address - it looked like a fairly run-down house on an ordinary little side street. I wasn't much wrong. Basically, the owner had only recently begun to rent out rooms as a hostel, and he was in the middle of renovating his property at the same time. It was nuts. There was all this junk piled up on the front porch, two random dogs wandering around, and a large inflatable pool in the backyard. The "dorm" room that we'd reserved turned out to be a tiny room in the back of the renovated shed in the backyard. The common room, also in the shed, doubled as another bedroom - which meant that as we came and went from our room, we had to constantly tiptoe around other folks who were sleeping in the common room. There was also a large tent pitched in the backyard, apparently as another room for rent. Pretty crazy! But the owner, Paul, was a friendly, laid-back guy and he made us feel right at home. He lent us a couple of blankets to take with us for the penguin tour in the evening, which we were more than grateful for by the end! But with that said, this was not the sort of hostel where there was any point in spending time just sitting around and relaxing (there was no space!), so as soon as we'd dumped our stuff and eaten a quick lunch, we headed off to do some more exploring.

On our way to the hostel we'd passed the Koala Conservation Centre, and since Janet really wanted to see koalas, we headed back there. It was great! There were boardwalks set up in the gum trees at "koala level", so we didn't spend the entire tour craning our necks up to look in the canopy for koalas. There were lots of informative sign posts along the boardwalks, and they were all movable! Since the koalas do most of their moving around from tree-to-tree after dark, each morning the rangers could walk through the boardwalks, spot the individual koalas, and move the sign posts to the appropriate spots before the visitors arrived. This meant that as we explored, we learned about moms and babies, male dominance, old age, sleeping, etc. etc., all along the way. Also, there were rangers on duty all along the boardwalks, to keep people from harassing the koalas.

Actually, in many ways one of the "sub-themes" for this weekend was How Idiotic Can People Possibly Be, but again, more on that later.

One of the major highlights of the Koala Conservation Centre was when the lone male koala decided that he was going for a walk. We rounded a corner on the boardwalk to discover this huge koala quite calmly walking down the railing - escorted closely by a ranger to keep people a safe distance away! It was really cool. The ranger asked us all to step back to the far side of the boardwalk so the koala would feel safe, and explained that the koala was likely heading for a specific tree on the far side of the enclosure. The ranger cleared a path for the koala and off it went - at its own pace, thank you very much - even stopping to pose for pictures a few times along the way. When it passed me by I could have reached out and touched it, but of course I didn't. :-)

We headed back to Cowes to find a place to eat dinner, and accidentally discovered a cute little Night Market going on! As we explored the various stalls, the wind started to really pick up. In fact, the gusts grew so strong that the tent stalls were blowing away! I felt really bad for some of the vendors. Some of the food vendors just packed up and went home, as it was too dangerous for them to have open flame near such large amounts of flapping canvas and plastic. We decided to eat dinner somewhere indoors.

After dinner, it was finally time to head to the other end of the island to experience the Penguin Parade. What an aptly-named attraction! Phillip Island's penguin colony claims to be Australia's most famous natural attraction (funny, I would have thought that Uluru, or the Great Barrier Reef, would have already claimed that honour). Anyhow. There's a great visitors centre which explains the biology of the Little Penguin (also known as the Fairy Penguin), the world's smallest species of penguin and the only species found in Australia. The birds live in large colonies and they nest in the sand dunes, digging out burrows for themselves under the roots of the dune vegetation. Each morning the birds head out to sea to fish, and return each evening just after dusk. It was this "parade" in from the water that we had come to see.

A boardwalk led from the visitors centre out to the viewing platforms, and we marched out there along with a whole pile of other people to take our places on the beach and to wait for the birds to arrive. It was really, really cold and windy, and all three of us had on pretty much every item of clothing we'd brought on the trip with us! I was really glad for the wool blankets we'd borrowed from the hostel, too - we sat on one and covered our legs with the other. Huge stormy clouds kept rolling across the island, so we were intermittently pelted with sheets of rain and howling wind. On the plus side, as we were approaching the beach, the sun came out briefly and we were treated to the most spectacular, full-arched, double rainbow I have ever seen in my life. I could clearly see where both ends of the rainbow touched the earth (and water). How beautiful!

I have no pictures of this magical event, or anything else from the evening, because there was a strict no camera policy enforced by the park rangers. The penguins are very sensitive to bright lights, and the camera flashes would upset them greatly - even to the point of driving them back into the water or leading them to abandon the colony! And since it is utterly impossible to regulate the use of flash photography, the centre had gone one step further and just banned photography altogether. It's ok though, there were some excellent photos on sale in the gift shop, and I purchased a few afterwards.

This is where the Idiotic People Rant comes in. I was absolutely appalled at the behavior of the other people we were with. Right left and center, as soon as people were settled in the stands, the cameras came out and people started snapping photos. While this was mostly happening before the penguins arrived, every time a ranger saw someone with a camera out, they had to come over and tell them firmly to put it away again. How ANYONE missed the massive "no photography" signs, the announcements, and the "why no photos are allowed" talk by the rangers, is completely beyond me. I was particularly annoyed by the family behind us - I guess the mom pulled out her camera to take a picture and her kid said "Mom, I don't think we're allowed", and the mom's answer was "It doesn't matter. It's just one photo." ARGH! What sort of example does that set for your child? I mean, COME ON.

The only other thing the rangers asked us to do were to sit still and quietly. The "sitting still" thing also proved impossible for many people. No matter how many times this was enforced by the rangers, as the penguins appeared on the beach, groups of people would get up and rush over to one end of the stands or the other in order to get a closer look. This, of course, frightened the birds AND blocked the views of people who were already sitting there, including us. The "teacher" in Jen, Janet and I really reared its ugly head here. We started basically yelling at people to sit down as they tried to cut in front. I couldn't believe the glares we got back. Again - if my students had EVER behaved this badly, several things would have happened. (1) Cameras would have been taken away. (2) They would have been removed from the stands. It was so frustrating that all these ADULTS couldn't handle simple instructions that 5-year-olds could figure out - and that the park rangers, as hard as they tried, could do pretty much nothing about it. At least students can be disciplined!

If I was in charge of this facility, I would do several things. First, I would confiscate the offending cameras, and charge a $5 return fee to the stupid idiots who were snapping photos at the end of the evening. Next, I would not allow anyone to sit in the sand in front of the concrete stands. People in the stands pretty much stayed put once they'd claimed seats; it was all the folks sitting in front of us right on the sand who were causing the problems with standing up and running around. I would give such offenders ONE warning and then eject them from the viewing area. I mean, really - that's basically what we do in the classroom when a child's behaviour is bad. How sad that adults can't follow simple rules. There were clearly explained, legitimate reasons for why we needed to be still and not take pictures.

OK. Rant over. I promise. :-)

It was sad that all this stupid behaviour had to detract from such a magical evening, because it was magical. As night fell, the penguins appeared silently at the edge of the surf in small groups of 5-20 birds. Once they felt safe enough to leave the water, they would waddle their way up the shore and into the dunes. They were all around us! Some of the groups passed quite close by where we were sitting. Little Penguins are just that - little - only getting to be about 30cm tall. Once most of the birds had come ashore, the rangers told us that we should wander back along the boardwalks. Turns out that the holes we'd seen in the dunes on our way to the beach were penguin burrows! So all around us on the way back to the visitors centre, the dunes were now alive with penguins! Penguins greeting each other, feeding chicks, preening, walking around... it was totally awesome. We actually saw the birds much closer along the boardwalks than on the beach, so I was glad we got to spend some time there.

Suffice it to say that by the time we finally crawled back to the hostel, it was very late, we were very tired, and so glad we'd come! Even with all the stupid people.

This morning we said our goodbyes at the hostel and headed out to do some more exploring of the island before heading back to Melbourne. We went back down to past where the Penguin Parade is, all the way to the western-most tip of the island, to a pair of rocks called The Nobbies. The Nobbies themselves are important seabird nesting grounds, and off-limits to people. That didn't stop three stupid idiots who were down on the rocks, playing in the surf. Morons. Not only is the beach off-limits (as in, the only access point, a stairway, was blocked off with a big DO NOT ENTER sign, that they must have hopped over to get down there), the waves coming in off the ocean were huge and the three guys were in danger of being swept away. We reported them to the park rangers. We had the satisfaction, at the end of the morning, of seeing them being questioned by police. Apparently one of the blokes actually fell into the ocean, and was lucky to get out again alive. This stretch of beach has killed people before.

The cliffs and dunes around The Nobbies were spectacular. The wind was fierce and whipping up the ocean like nobody's business, and I got some pretty good shots of ocean surf crashing against the rocks. We even spied a lone penguin lounging at the entrance to its burrow. So cute! There were lots of silver gulls nesting in the dunes as well, and so for the first time in my life I saw seagull chicks. Jen and I were joking that the poor seagulls get a "bad rap"... here all these zillions of tourists flock to the island to check out the penguins, because they are "cute". But what about the gulls? They play an important role in the local ecology as well, but because they are a "common" bird, they are often ignored. I, for one, enjoyed the opportunity to get close to a gull chick - they were beautifully camouflaged and once they had hidden themselves in the grasses, were almost impossible to spot.

Seal Rock, which is further out in the ocean past The Nobbies, is home to a large seal colony. The island is too far from land to be able to see the seals from shore, and unfortunately due to the stormy conditions the boat cruises had been canceled, so we had to content ourselves with learning more about the seals at the interpretative centre instead. Ah well, can't win them all!

Once we'd finished with The Nobbies, we had just enough time left to zip around the island and visit a couple of other short nature trails before we had to head home. At Pyramid Rock, Janet snapped a photo of me and Jen that nicely shows how insanely windy it was. At Conservation Hill, we explored a boardwalk that took us through a mangrove swamp filled with millions of tiny crabs. And at Cape Wollemai we marveled at the awesome waves coming in to shore, but didn't have enough time to hike the trails out to the point. Wollemai Beach is a world famous surf beach, but there were no surfers today - the waves were just too huge and the wind too cold!

So after all this, we finally headed back home to Melbourne, where our housemate Renzo had promised to prepare us dinner. And what a dinner! I swear there was enough food to feed a small army, let alone the 14 or so of us who shared in the meal. Have I said recently how much I love my house? It feels so strange... in two days I'll leave here and not return for six whole weeks, as I head off to explore Queensland and the Northern Territory. I'm going to miss everyone!