Phillip Island and the Penguin Parade

Great flight from LAX to Melbourne on the new Qantas A-380 'mega plane. 'Although built for 800 psgrs, it has been reconfigured to seat 450 – still a lot of people descending on a single airport, especially when their baggage crew is on a “slowdown” to protest the airline's policies .

Finally, we exited the airport into a lovely warm spring day in Melbourne and boarded buses along with about 160 other Aussie Specialists for our PreCorroboree foray down to Phillip Island, The lovely pastoral scenery was lush and green after the sprng rains. Really looked good to a Texan who's gone through the state's hottest and driest summer in history.  Almost 2 hours late due to the slowdown at the airport we were starving by the time we arrived at the All Seasons Resort. Lunch on Phillip Island and devoured the sandwiches which tasted wonderful.

Back on the road again on Phillip Island we headed to the Koala Conservation Center. Dedicated to koala research and conservation, it offered an excellent  opportunity to view koalas in their natural habitat on treetop boardwalks. I learned that Koalas (those adorable Teddy Bears that everyone associates with Australia) are definitely nocturnal creatures and sleep about 20 hours a day -- sounded pretty good to me ! They're picky eaters and only eat eucalyptus  leaves which provide very little nourishment, thus the lack of energy! By the time we left our sun had departed and we'd donned blue parkas in the rain.

Final stop and virtually every visitor's goal when visiting Phillip Island was  the Penguin Parade.  The experience began at Nobbies Center for some background on these adorable little penguins.  They achieved notoriety when threatened by an oil spill in 2000.  Locals responded to an appeal and knitted tiny sweaters for the little guys to prevent them from licking the toxic oil off their feathers. Photo shows their little attire. 

As the sun  set we walked over to bleaches just beyond the beach and waited for the Parade to begin.  When total darkness covered the beach, someone whispered "Here they come,"and, sure enough, the little guys weighing about 7kg. rose out of the ocean where they had been feeding all day and waddled beside us toward their individual burrows. Here they frequently live for years and usually with the same mate and their offspring (usually 1 or 2 a season).  I could see their bulging bellies, and some had eaten so much they had to rest occasionally during their walk.  Thousands of the birds passed just a couple of feet in front of us --  totally ignoring our presence.  The peace of the night had been replaced by their noisy chirping.

Thoroughly exhausted but also exhilarated by our first-day's experiences, we returned to our bungalows and fell asleep instantly. Tomorrow we head back to Phillip Island and begin our 3-day meeting.

More tomorrow from Melbourne.
Linda