Well, not really…  but, we did see wallabies, penguins and koala bears!

Brent had the idea to take a day trip to the coast to see the penguins. It was a much needed day away, because I’ve hit the wall of exhaustion with unpacking and handling all the logistics to get the kids enrolled into school/playgroups. Hence the delays in posting.

We went to Phillip Island which is along the Bass Strait (waterway between mainland Australia and Tasmania) on the southern coast. We made the first amateur driving mistake of simply putting the address into the GPS. It was to take about 1 1/2 hours to get there. After about an hour, I started to notice that we were following signs to the ferry. We then realized that we were on the wrong side of bay to get onto the island… these were passenger ferries, and we wanted to cross the bridge. We had to drive another hour in the other direction around the bay to get to the other side of the island. We must have talked about crossing the bridge so much that Isla kept asking to see the bridge. It turned out to be quite small- probably around a 1/4 mile long! We have learned to “uncheck” the ferry option in our GPS settings!

We finally arrived and went to the Koala Bear Conservation Centre. We were able to walk trails and see the koala bears along with other wildlife. We saw our first wallaby {No need to google- it’s like a small kangaroo} and some beautifully colored birds, which unfortunately, I have no idea what they were. Perhaps I knew these things at one point, perhaps not… but it’s nice to learn/re-learn these things again. Koala bears sleep 20 hours a day {a dream come true right now!}, so that’s all they were doing for our visit. Nonetheless, it was still really cool to see them. We were able to walk up boardwalks so that we could get a closer look at them in the treetops. A few times they would move slightly, and one woke for about 20 seconds to scratch himself, and then went right back to sleep.

Next was the obligatory stop at the brewery across the street for lunch. {Beer note: Though they have a lot of craft beers here, Brent still hasn’t found an IPA that is hoppy enough for him. No worries- we will continue our quest…}. We then continued to the Nature Center to walk the coast and see the Penguin Parade at dusk.

As we made our way there, Brent was veering off the road to look at the surfers, and it dawned on me that we had also come to scout out good surfing spots! Apparently the island is also renown for its surfing, so I’m sure we’ll be back. I, on the other hand, was too busy looking for kangaroos, but no such luck for a sighting.

And the coastline was beautiful…. Some days you wonder why you’ve moved half way around the world, and then you realize it’s for moments like these… And it wasn’t a bad view for a coffee and cake.

We did make a quick stop for the kids to play on the beach, and Brent to watch the surfers. The kids enjoyed throwing seashells into the water. Isla was happy to pose for a picture, but Greyson was way too busy to make time for such nonsense… he was on a mission to find shells…

And finally, we made it to the Penguin Parade. This is where you can watch the little penguins return back home at night after they’ve been out to sea all day. They arrived at sunset- about 5:38pm for our showing. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures of them arriving, so you can watch a video here. The penguins swim to shore and trek to their nests; some heading into the wooden nesting boxes. We got to see over 600 penguins arrive. They marched up the beach and did not care that there were people just a few feet away.

Here we are awaiting their arrival. We spent an hour waiting so that was a lot of fun keeping Greyson entertained! But, it was worth the wait!