8 Oct Melbourne

Today we took an afternoon/evening trip to see the Penguin Parade & Australian Wildlife. The trip started out with a visit to a working farm that has Emus and Kangaroos you can feed and touch and Wombats that that come with a warning that they may bite.

Here is a shot of me feeding an Emu part of a muffin, one thing to keep in mind is that they are very fast, and have long necks. These mean that they are more than capable of reaching over the fence to take the bread out of your hand before you even realize they are there.


Here is the warning and a photo of a Wombat.

Further along Amir got comfortable with one of the kangaroos (one of our tour mates has titled this shot should be called “brothers”).

Also, Arbel was able to get one of the more shy kangaroos to take food from him.

Afterward we were taken to a Koala sanctuary on Phillips Island that was set up by the same trust that manages the Little Penguin sanctuary on the island. Here we were able to walk up a raised walkway that allowed us to get to Koala height in the Eucalyptus trees.

In one case there was a mother and child in a tree that was less than a meter from the walk way (the rangers had roped off the end so that we could not get too close, but we were still very close). Sorry I could not get a clear shot of them so here is the sign that was next to them.

Then we went to the Little Penguin sanctuary.Unfortunately, at the Little Penguin sanctuary there is no photography allowed as the penguins are very skittish and can easily be scared back in to the water.

As we sat waiting for them, we had to wait until the sky had darkened enough for them to feel safe. Then we were lucky enough to see one swimming just where the waves broke. It walked up onto the beach a little, seemed to find itself alone and went back into the water where it waited for several others to join it. Then as a group of about 7 they started up the beach to their burrows. Each time they would start up, they would look around and if any of them got frightened and went back into the water then they all followed. Eventually this group made it off of the sand into the grass with another group following close behind. Once in the grass they would move up little paths to where ever their particular burrow was located. In some cases there was already a female and chick waiting for them in the burrow, where they had hidden all day. As it as very cold, we waited to see several groups cross the beach and then we split up as we went back to the visitors Center. Along the way we walked on boardwalks over the penguin’s path and along side them as some of them walked quite far from the beach. In fact the car park has a warning sign:

Here is a photo I took in the visitor center of penguins so you can see what they look like.

The Little Penguin is the smallest species of penguin being about 43 cm (16 in) tall.