Phillip Island and the Penguin Parade

Situated to the southeast of Melbourne, beyond Port Phillip Bay, is a weekend outdoors waiting to happen, known as Phillip Island. My roommate Artan, my friend Indran, and I headed out one Saturday morning to find out what all the talk was about, and found ourselves rushing around to try to hit the main places to visit in our short day trip. I had originally planned to fit a surfing lesson in, but no one was teaching that day – because it is winter (though other places in Victoria still have lessons).

We started out by buying the three-park pass after stopping at a tourist information centre. The three parks included Churchill Island, an old British vacation home that has been maintained; the Koala Reserve, where you can walk along various paths to see koalas in the semi-wild; and the Penguin Parade, where little penguins return from weeks at sea to their hobbit-village among the rocks and rabbit holes. We made two other stops along the way at the Wildlife Refuge and The Nobbies, both worth the effort.

Part 1 – Churchill Island

Churchill Island wasn’t really my cup of tea, to be honest. Once you leave the tourist centre, you make a right turn, and follow a winding road to a one-lane bridge onto the smaller, more private “Churchill Island.” I think the walks around there would be nice, but it was just someone’s old summer home. And we’re not talking B.C., we’re talking 1800s, at best. So, while it was fun, the highlight was feeding the horse with the bucket of food that was just sitting there to tempt it, or going to the petting area to mix it up with some baby sheep and weird chickens with puffballs on their heads. Yes, it was designed for small children, and yes, I was entertained.



We came back to enjoy the second best part of our visit to Churchill Island – the view of the water and island from the comfort of our balcony dining table. I sat down to some vegetable minestrone while we put our feet up for a bit.



Then the drill sergeant in me kicked in because we had deadlines to meet if we were going to see everything we wanted to see, so we jumped in the car, wound about the island back to the one-lane bridge and back toward semi-civilization.

Part 2 – Koala Reserve
Back at the main road through the island, we made a right and headed toward the centre. We finally made it to the fork in the road and took a right, toward the Koala Reserve. The penguins are much more time conscious than the koalas, which makes sense, since they tend to be more formal in their attire, so we had to build our schedule around the penguins’ ETA. Koalas are doped up on eucalyptus, so they’re always lounging about. More on that in a minute.

Once we arrived at the Koala Reserve, we stamped our three-park pass and headed out the door, where we noticed our first koala – a stuffed 4-foot tall (while sitting) marsupial (they aren’t bears) ready for picture taking. And tourist that I am, I took a picture with the four-foot fake koala bear.



We headed out onto the various paths that wind around the sanctuary, looking in the trees for the plush beasts, but initially to no avail. I make it sound bad – that lasted about 5 minutes.

Finally, we found the “Koala Boardwalk,” which sounded promising – it was a raised set of wooden boardwalks that brought us closer to the treetops where the koalas are more likely to be feasting. And sure enough, as soon as we stepped onto the walk, a koala came into view way up high in the nearest tree. So I started shooting the heck out of it – with my camera – only to catch myself wondering why I was the only one really looking at it (well, okay, there were three of us now. Artan and Indran had given me a mandate to find a koala, so I was showing off my skills). But a little bit of logic and social knowledge prevailed. There was a huge group of people (read: 10) crowded around another tree at the other side of the boardwalk. Being the student of psychology that I am, I knew that there must be something more fascinating about that tree than the one I was looking at. And I led our expedition onward.

Sure enough, there were two koalas at the site, one that was so close, I could almost grab it by the leg (okay not that close). But I could see him up-close-and-personal (no koala holding at this place), and I got some great shots. One might say I went overboard. I think I took 100 pics or so. Ah the benefit of digital cameras.



Fun fact about koalas: eucalyptus, the only food they will eat, is filled with a drug-like mellowing agent, which is why they always seem so relaxed. They are. They’re doped up like beatniks on marijuana, making nothing from their lives and constantly having the munchies. I think that is a fair assessment. Which also explains why they are so picky – they want their buzz.

We stood there amazed for 15 minutes or so, before I said, “Okay, you’ve seen one koala, you’ve seen them all,” and led us back past the fuzzy replica to our car, and onward to glory – er, the petting zoo.

Part 3 – Wildlife Refuge
We cut into our time at Churchill Island and the Koala Reserve to spend thirty minutes at the zoo (I don’t remember what it was really called). There, when you pay $15 to enter, you get a bag of food. Why? Because half of the animals roam around the area with you – no fences. To be completely truthful, some animals are in their own pens, but we’ve all seen that before. I got to walk with kangaroos, wallabies (basically, miniature kangaroos), and emus (like ostriches), among other animals. What’s more, we got to feed them! Mammals and marsupials, I have determined, are the friendliest animals to feed. They know how to take something without completely freaking you out. Birds, on the other hand, are the worst. They have this pecking thing that is really unnerving, and since their beaks are hard, there’s nothing tremendously comfortable about it.



We fed the kangaroos for a while before we found our way to the emu pen, which you can just walk into. Emus and kangaroos are the national symbols of Australia. They are also both animals that cannot walk backward. That’s the rationale for the symbolism – Australia is always moving forward.



The emus were by far the scariest animal I fed. They startle you the whole time. They have long necks, so when they peck for food, their heads cover about 5 feet in an instant. Then they stole my foodback and dipped their heads back like they were in a beer chugging contest. Fortunately I had another bag. Then, another emu came up to get some din-din, and the two almost got in a fight. A sad little wallaby tried to come over for a bite, but the emus threatened to take his head off. He curtsied politely and took off.



So we saw a ton of indigenous animals, too many to name, but worthy of note were the dingos, wombats, Tasmanian devils, and koalas again. There were also some other birds like the emu, whose name eludes me, but looked like some dinosaur with a “dorsal-fin” shaped bone on their heads and red eyes.




We milled about for a bit longer than I should have allowed, but how could you pass this one up. Finally, at the direction of Artan, we hobbled back over to the car, and back onto the road toward the end of the island, and The Nobbies.

Part 4 – The Nobbies
I don’t know why they call it the Nobbies. I also don’t know why the tourist centre closed ahead of time. The park said that it closed at 5:00pm, and we clearly had another 15 minutes. But c’est la vie, and the security guard at the door didn’t have any better information. Fortunately, the best sights at the Nobbies are outdoor. (By the way, it’s not part of the three-park pass, but it’s a free centre anyway). On some days, you can get on a ferry and head out to the trail of islands referred to as the Nobbies and see the seals lounging on the most distant bit of land. We’ll have to save that for another trip, because there were no ferries when we were there.



Instead, we were treated to a maze of boardwalks that led around this beautiful part of the island, where ocean water sprays up after waves break upon the black rocks beneath. Sea birds, like seagulls, but somehow more interesting, were all over the place – flying, standing, squawking, dive-bombing. The black rocks were in stark contrast to the white birds and the green foliage, while the ocean licked the rocks and foamed white as it fought for control of the coastline. Stunning.



Part 5 – The Penguin Parade
After retracing our steps back up the boardwalks to our car, we headed just a couple kilometers back up the road our formal meeting of the night – the Penguin Parade. Our hosts and entertainers tend to be pretty punctual, so we had to get there a few minutes before dusk. We headed from the visitor centre along to the main stands, which look like one side of the stands in a football stadium with no football field, including the monster lights that keep the field lit in the evening. I think it must be a funny joke to the penguins, and other onlookers, to see a group of people huddled in these huge stands with lights shining into the distance, only to see empty beach and a little patch of ocean.

Fortunately, after about thirty minutes of this embarrassing scene, little spots appeared as the tide ebbed in and out. The little spots started moving around, and as the waves pulled back, little black deposits of penguins were left on the beach, debating whether or not to head in the rest of the way. Here’s how they explained it to me (by “they” I mean the park workers, not the penguins): the penguins are perfectly camouflaged in the water – black / dark blue backs so flying animals won’t see them for the ocean, white bellies so underwater predators will mistake them for the sky. They tend to hang out in the ocean for about three weeks at a time, but need to stop back on land to rest for three to five days. On land, they hide in the rocks. But when they are coming from the water to the land, they are totally vulnerable on the beach. Which is why they wait until just after dusk. But once they get to the beach, they have to decide whether to scurry across and put themselves at risk, or to run back to the water and safety. As such, we couldn’t talk or take pictures, as we might scare them off – permanently.

Now you’re probably thinking of Emperor Penguins – those massive penguins from Antarctica that huddle around each other to keep their eggs warm in the coldest place on earth (there’s a great Discover Earth about them). These are not those penguins. They are called faerie penguins. Or were. The homosexual community here somehow was offended by calling these guys faeries, so they have started calling them little penguins. Not trying to be political, but I can’t understand how these penguins that have been called faerie penguins for so long have somehow started causing offense. It’s like Proctor and Gamble telling people not to call betting “gambling” because they have chosen to take on that name – there is no relationship between the two.

Okay, back to the story. Faerie or little penguins are pretty small guys, and they tend to run in little groups of five to ten penguins while they traverse the beach. Normally, in the summer, a couple thousand will come each night. Thinking about it as they only stop in once every three weeks, but they come in by the thousands each night, there are a lot of penguins. But, since it is winter, we only saw a couple hundred. Still impressive, but a little more quaint than summer.

After seeing the penguins, most people just rush back to their cars and head out for dinner or back home. But you really should wait around. After the penguins have been home for a few minutes, they start to get chatty. And they make such strange noises: clicking, screeching, whining like babies. Eerie, yet beautiful. Pound for pound, they are the loudest penguins for their size. And even with weight aside, they can get pretty loud.

By this time it was dark, we were wet, and cold, and hungry, but totally satisfied. We grabbed some hot cocoa from the visitor centre and jumped in the car headed for home.

Phillip Island and the Penguin Parade – COMPLETE.