Melbourne, Australia, Australia

Today I finally got to go somewhere I’ve been meaning to go since I got to Melbourne, Phillip Island. Lisa and I signed up for this tour at the same time as the Great Ocean Road tour, and today was the day. One cool thing about it was that we had Cameron as a tour guide again, so we at least already knew him.

We started out with an hour long drive down to Moonlit Sanctuary Wildlife Conservation Park to see some animals. It was not one of the nicer parks I’ve been to, but it had some wombats, which I hadn’t seen yet on this trip, and they let you feed the wallabies, so that was cool. Cameron took us around the park and told us a few things about the animals they had there and then let us go off and feed the wallabies and kangaroos, if they would come to you. Of course, as soon as he finished talking, it started pouring outside and the wallabies were much less interested in the food than they were with staying in the woods keeping dry. I stayed out for a few minutes feeding them and then headed inside to stay dry and get some lunch.

From there we headed over to the Koala Conservation Center and saw some koalas and a few more wallabies in a very natural looking habitat. Unfortunately, in Victoria you aren’t allowed to hold a koala like you are in Queensland, so we were limited to just taking some pictures from afar.

We then headed over to Churchill Island to go to a farm, in what was the most boring part of the trip. They did a demonstration with the herding dogs which was cool, but after that we were meant to watch sheep shearing, which I had no interest in at all. I then learned how to crack a whip, and immediately hit myself in the head, which is not fun. And then I was very keen to learn how to throw a boomerang, but they said it was too windy, so we couldn’t give it a shot.

We left Churchill Island and headed over to Phillip Island where the fairy penguins live. We first went up to the far point to see if we could spot any that were already on the island to get a picture of them. When we saw the penguin parade later at night, we were not allowed to take any photos, so we tried to get some before the parade started. We managed to spot a couple of them but they are pretty well hidden, so we managed to get just a couple of pictures before moving into the visitor’s center for the parade.

At 5:55pm the first penguin came up on the beach, and about 800 penguins followed suit. It was pretty cool to see all of these little penguins (most of which were not over 12 inches tall) waddling up the beach and over the island to get to their little homes. It was a real shame that we weren’t allowed to take any photos or video, but the flash can really hurt their eyes, so I suppose that makes sense. We finished watching the penguins make their march up the beach and boardwalk and then grabbed some dinner before heading back to Melbourne on the bus.

It was another enjoyable Bunyip Tour with Cameron as our guide and a decent group of people to travel with. There were a couple of girls on the bus who were from the States, and one was even a Red Sox fan from Connecticut! What are the odds?! It was a good day out, and now I’m back in Melbourne and wondering what else I can get out to see that won’t cost me a fortune…