10th Mar 2012 - 14th Mar 2012
Our flight landed back into Melbourne about 10am, our flight with Jetstar was fine and we had amazing views of New Zealand as we took off. We then had to wait on our luggage, surprisingly we didn't get our bags searched like on 'border control'. Lorraine kindly picked us up and we spent the rest of the day sleeping. Had a few lazy days at my cousins before heading on a mini mini road trip for a few days.
We headed an hour to the coast to Brighton Beach where hundreds of beach huts line the sand. They are so cute, all painted in different colours- pastels, stripes, bolds, even one with the Aussie flag. We had a little sunbathe before carrying on down the coast to Phillip Island, which is world famous for it's little penguins.
We arrived on Phillip Island at night so watched the sunset and parked on a cliff watching the waves and sparkly stars. Spent the next day sunbathing at Cowes beach (the main town shares it name with Isle of Wight) before going to The Nobbies where's there's apparently a large seal colony (we didn't see any but that was fine we'd seen lots in NZ) but walking along the boardwalks we seen our first glimpse of these little penguins hiding under the walkway.
Then it was off to see lots more little penguins at "Penguin Parade", where we managed to get front row seats- we watched as hundreds of silvery bellies appeared out of the dark water. These 30cm, 1kg little fairy penguins had been to sea catching dinner. It's moulting season so we seen lots of scraggy, fluffy, fat penguins, although some still had their waterproof coats.
So they waddle up the beach in their groups and go up to 2km inland to their burrows. One of the little guys got lost from his friends and came right up to our feet. They are so cute and small! After watching them on the beach we followed them to their burrows as we walked along the boardwalk. Although these creatures are tiny they sure make alot of noise. It was a really cool experience but we weren't allowed photos as the flash would scare them, so we settled for a postcard and Shan treated me to my own (stuffed) penguin. We heard the total count was 1168 penguins that came ashore.
Parked up by the cliffs again looking out to sea. The next day we went to Cowes again in the 30 degree sunshine, went for a swim then made our own barbie on the beach, before heading back to Darren and Lorraine's and getting ready for the grand prix!
