On Saturday, we drove to Philip Island, a few hours southeast of Melbourne. Philip Island is special in two ways:
Firstly, lots of the towns on the island are named after towns on the Isle of Wight. For example, we stayed in Cowes and the main attraction that we visited was in Ventor.
Main attraction? Oh yes, the second awesome thing on Philip Island is the penguins. Now, I hadn't realised that penguins ventured north of the Antarctic but apparently there are multiple species of penguin to be found throughout the southern hemisphere. The penguins on Philip Island can be seen emerging from the sea every evening at dusk. We sat, along with a massive crowd of people, and watched as the penguins predictably emerged from the sea and waddled up the beach to the sand dunes where they make their nests. We could then observe the penguins up close from the board walk. They seemed completely un-bothered by our presence. We watched a penguin family going about its penguin-ey business. The daddy penguin collected bits of grass to line the nest while the mummy penguin followed the baby penguin around and tried to keep it out of trouble.
Sadly, we weren't allowed to take any pictures of the penguins (apparently, a camera flash can be rather hazardous to their health) so here is a link to some pictures that someone else took:
1 comment:
That photo looks very much like it was taken with a flash. I hope no penguins died during the taking of it.
Post a Comment