Wildlife Extravaganza

On Holy Thursday, Jeff and I took off of work and headed down to Phillip Island with the Turnbulls.  We had a packed itinerary that included:
1.  Forrest Caves
2.  Koala Conservatory
3.  Nobbies
4.  Phillip Island Penguin Parade

Phillip Island is about an hour and a half from Melbourne, around the east side of the bay.  We have been down to the area before for a V8 Supercars Race, Country Horse Race, and the Forrest Caves, but Jeff hadn't done the Koala Conservatory, Nobbies, or Penguin Parade - we were saving these for visitors.  We left the house around 7:30am and headed to the coast.

First stop:  The Forrest Caves.  Even though we had been here not long ago, it is always striking how beautiful and deserted this place is...even though Melbourne was on school holidays (2 weeks off for Easter), the beach was still empty.  And the waves were unbelievably strong - HUGE waves...not sure the pictures will do it justice.

Forrest Caves at high tide

BigBull almost took a wave splash to the face a few times

Next Stop:  Koala Conservatory.  The Koala Conservatory is an open-air zoo where you just walk around and see the animals in their habitat.  We saw LOTS of koalas, many different types of birds, and several wallabies.

They sleep 20 out of 24 hours

He is asleep, and has good balance

Koala poo

Wallaby, the kangaroos midget cousin

Third Stop:  The best pizza in Australia - if they delivered, we would only order from them.  We were joking with the waitress that we would be back for dinner....little did we know, we really did end up coming back for dinner - Pizza twice in one day!

Fourth Stop:  The Nobbies.  The Nobbies are known for the blow-hole, where the ocean has worn away the rocks in such a way that the water rushes in and then blows back out, but the most amazing part of the day was the rough ocean - the blow-hole didn't stand a chance to the huge waves - they were even bigger than at the Forrest Caves.  I think I took 200 pictures of the water....it'll only take one picture to make us rich, right?!

BigBull liked this rock

The cave in the bottom right is the blow-hole

A big wave hitting the blow-hole

Blow-hole post big wave

Blow-hole blowing

These waves are entering the bay and take a 90-degree turn into shore
 around the coastline.  They make for a long surf.

Fifth Stop:  The Phillip Island Penguin Parade.  Phillip Island is the home to Little Penguins, the smallest of all penguins.  They only stand about a foot tall, and they are just so cute...unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take any pictures of the penguins, so this is the only one that we have:

Happened to pass him on the side of the road.
He's molting, which is why he looks a bit scruffy.

The penguins will travel up to 2km from their home to the ocean, spend up to 4 weeks out in the water hunting, then wait until sunset to come back to their beach, and take the same route to their home that they've been doing since they were babies.  When the penguins come back to shore, they take their time gaining confidence to cross the beach - safety in numbers, then they make a sprint (as fast as you can go without any knees), rest at the beginning of their colony area, then make the long trek home.  Some have homes right on the dunes of the beach, some travel much further.  When they come back, they spend a great deal of time standing outside of their burrow - this is their social time.

Little penguin we saw on the St. Kilda Pier

Sixth Stop:  The best pizza in Australia, again.  And, embarrassingly enough, the waitress remembered us.  But the pizza was awesome!

We ended up getting home around 10.30pm, just enough time to get ready to head out to Sydney on Friday morning!