It was the day of the exploration of Phillip Island to see the Penguins.
I had booked this trip online with Melbourne Coastal Tours and was to meet the bus with all the other passengers at 10:30 in front of Flinders street station.
To not miss the bus I took an earlier train and still had some time to walk around town and met two small stuffed koalas in a shop that wanted to join me on my travels (at least for a while).
At exactly 10:30 the little Toyota Hiace Bus pulled up and Campbell the driver greeted me.
Since I was the last one to be picked up (they had picked up the other 7 passengers at their hotels along the way) I could sit in the front.
It quickly turned out that everyone on the bus (except Campbell) either lives or has been living in Dublin at some point.
It was a good group, so.
Campbell was a good entertainer, did his jokes along the way and our first stop was Arthur's seat, which indeed is named after Arthur's seat in Edinburgh.
In Melbourne it is also a mountain that has a nice view over the bay. We took our pictures and continued on along the main ridge (that's the name of the ridge or the road) and arrived at a cheese farm. This was not part of the tour I booked but since the small, young and dynamic tour operator company had to combine the simple Penguin day tour (which I booked) with the Gourmet tour (which some people on the bus booked), I got to enjoy this part of the trip as well.
It was a farm that specialized on organic goats cheese and we got to pet some of the little goats before tasting their products.
There were about 8 or 9 different cheese (very small amounts but loads of choice) and all of them were tasty in different ways.
I even got a glass of marinated cheese for Brad and his family.
For the next stop I had the choice of whether I wanted to see a strawberry farm or a wine tasting at a local winery.
Since I may be the only person in the universe who doesn't like strawberries the choice was easy and we soon arrived at the winery set in a very picturesque valley over viewing the grape plants.
This was actually my very first wine tasting so I was pretty excited. Again (as with the cheese), the sips were tiny but there were 6 wines we tasted. All made at this winery. There were 3 white, one rose, one red and a sparkling. This is as much as I could tell about the wines - the colour and if they had bubbles or not.
Since all of us were in some way Irish, the wine tasting didn't take as long as planned and we even had some time left for a quick visit of the strawberry fields. It was just a quick look around there and soon we were off to lunch.
This is where the Gourmet part of the group split up and had lunch at a restaurant, where we, the day-trippers, were given a sandwich (a nice one actually) and were driven to a wildlife sanctuary a couple of kilometres up the road.
This small but nice place was called moonlight sanctuary and gave me finally a chance to see my beloved Koalas.
I spent some time looking at them and hoped for them to move. Once one of them turned his head around but that was it.
Still they are lovely fluffy bears... wait... they are not bears. They are Koalas.
Aside from the Koalas there were wallabies kangaroo, wombats, quolls and many other Australian Animals. It was a good time but I was also very happy when I could cool down with an ice cream after my walk around the park as it was quite warm.
The reason this place is called moonlight sanctuary is that you can visit it at night and witness some of the night active animals when they are moving around.
Around 5 the bus came back (while we were in the sanctuary Campbell had drive gourmet people, after they had their lunch to another place) to pick us up and finally drove across the bridge onto Phillip Island.
Because Phillip Island is the partner Island of the Isle of Wight many of the towns are named after towns on it's friend in the English channel.
We had Dinner (We could just grab something from any shop) in Cowes where we also picked up the Gourmet Girls again who arrived here by boat. Sounds very complicated but it all worked out perfectly.
Now it was finally time to do what this trip was all about - see the Penguins.
First stop for this were the Nobbies. A rock where the Penguins (or in some cases men) have built little caves/nests where the baby penguins wait for their parents to come back and bring some food.
It was a beautiful late afternoon, with clear skies and a warm, setting sun, that lit the rocks and plants in a wonderful colours. Even if there weren't any baby penguins this would have been a great place to go.
But there were Penguins which made the whole thing even more exciting. I could not see many but we did spot three or four of them sitting deep in their caves.
To get to what they call the collusseum, where we should be watching the penguins come out of the sea and walk across the beach into the dunes to get back to their nests we had to drive through a "Safari Park", where again, we spotted plenty of animals in the wild: Kangaroos, Eagles, rabbits, Penguins and many other animals.
The drive wasn't very long and soon we arrived at what looked like the parking lot of Disney Land.
30 or 40 big buses were parked on one side, hundreds of cars on the other. When entering the building that led towards the viewing gallery the theme continued with gift shops and (I am not making this up) pop corn stands.
I walked straight through this shop to find a relatively good spot on the steps from where we were going to watch the spectacle.
The penguins will start coming out just when the sun sets and walk across the beach.
It was nearly time now, and while the announce was finishing his warnings about not taking pictures of the Penguins the first started to arrive at beach and wobbled 5 meters across but then stopped, looked around. They just looked like a bunch of little kids, who were not too sure about crossing the street.
This group of maybe 10 Penguins then decided to whobble back into the sea.
This procedure was repeated 5 or 6 times with a little more bravery each time until they passed the point of no return and wobbled for their life towards the safety of the dunes.
Just when they finished a few other groups of little penguins started to come onto the beach and soon there were loads of them trying to get across. Very cute, very shy Penguins. It was really amazing and I felt (as with the turtles in Oman) like David Attenbourgh.
Soon the majority of Penguins had crossed the beach and climbed up into the dunes and the seats on the 3500 spectator holding steps freed up, so that I could get a bit closer to the action. In the end I sat on the sand right in front of the Penguins (maybe 7m away) when the walked past me.
It was lovely to see these little fellows. They are actually the smallest Penguin species in the world.
Before going back to the bus I could also see many of the Penguins from the wooden walkway, looking for their nests and mates in the dunes. I even witnessed Penguinsex.
We met up back at the bus at 10:15 and hit the road hard.
We would just make it back to Melbourne around Midnight which would be dangerously close to 00:04 when the last train to Brads house was going to leave.
So good man Campbell dropped me off at a train station along the line that was a bit out of town towards east (same direction as Brad lives) where the train would come by a few minutes later.
In the end the train had a good 15 minutes delay and it wouldn't have mattered but who could know.
I got home just before one and everyone but Brad was in bed already.
He had to listen to my story of this exiting day for a bit, but soon I was so tired that it was time to go to bed.
In summary, I have to say, I usually am not a big fan of these organized bus trips but here in Australia the two trips I did were just amazing. Both of them were filled with exiting adventures, great information, loads of fun and nice people.
They are not cheap, and you wouldn't be able to do them every day (financially and condition wise) but well worth the money.
I think it's a good idea to stick with smallish tour operators and check tripadvisor reviews before booking but they have to be done.
Tomorrow I will be leaving Australia again (very early in the morning), so I better say goodbye to you now.
You are a very different country to what I have seen so far on my trip, I heard loads of good things and some bad. Now since I got to know you just a little bit, I can say you there are many more things to be explored about you, but what I have seen, I have enjoyed.
This is of course not just because you have great landscapes, strange animals, wonderful beaches and cities but also because of my friends I got to visit on the other side of the world. Karsten and Lulu made a great team of hosts, letting me join them on their own holiday, showing me their new home.
Brad, as well opened his doors for me, helped me to safe some money in this place that is not cheap at all and showed me his home town and even brought me to family party.
Thank you very much guys for this and make sure you come around to that cold, rainy island on the edge of the Atlantic so I can repay my dept a bit :-)
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