Tuesday was a long, wonderful day. After breakfast we took Melbourne’s free tram down into the heart of the CBD and started wandering. In addition to its busy main streets, Melbourne’s Central Business District has lots of sidestreets and alleys, filleLd with interesting shops. cafes and take-aways. They’re generally called lanes, and the driver who had picked us up at the airport had suggested spending some time getting lost in the lanes. We did and we loved it.
After a few hours, we went back to the hotel and get our gear together for the excursion to Phillip Island. It’s about 90 minutes from Melbourne,and it’s where people go to see the Penguin Parade. The island is home to a large colony of Little Penguins, so named because they’re the smallest of the 17 penguin species. They also have blue rather than black feathers on their backs.
A national trust controls this part of the island, and they’ve set up grandstands and a visitors center. The money goes to the conservation effort, and the place is packed every night during the breeding season. Parents take turns baby-sitting and going out to get food. So one parent and its babies spend the day sleeping in their burrow or box. The other parent is out at sea from before dawn to dusk catching fish to bring back. Soon after sunset, when predator birds have gone to roost, the penguins return from the sea en masse. You can hear the babies crying hungrily for their moms or dads, and the naturalists say the penguin parents can tell which kids are theirs. But some of the hungry babies will go up to any adult who comes on to the dunes, and we watched one baby penguin get pushed away several times by adults who weren’t his or her mom or dad.
My one regret: you’re not allowed to take pictures of the penguins coming ashore. A camera flash could seriously disorient or possibly even blind one of the penguins. That could have lethal repercussions for both that penguin and his family. But you can take pictures in the hour or so while you’re waiting for night to fall. I didn’t know that, so I had left my camera gear behind. I took the picture above with my phone.
If you go to the Penguin Parade, spring for the higher-priced “penguin plus” seating. You get to sit much closer to where they come on to the beach, and you see a lot more.
It was midnight when we got back to our hotel. We were whipped. But we’d had a great day!