Australia: Day Two

Since we had a car, we decided to drive down to Phillips Island. They had four parks there that were a must see in all of the tourist magazines. So first we went to the Koala Conservatory. They have the Eucalyptus trees that koala's love and a board walk to just walk you through where they live. You have to try and spot them, but we had no trouble since there were so many. They mentioned in one of the signs that since Wallabies enjoy some of the same things as the koalas, they will hop the fence to get in the conservatory. We were walking along the trail below the boardwalk and saw one 15 feet away!! On our second walk through on the way back to our car we saw a baby koala (joey) eating some leaves while the oldest koala was right next to him just sleeping. They sleep 20 hours a day so is was neat to see one awake.







Next we went to eat at the Churchill homestead. They had a blacksmith, someone spinning wool, working sheep dogs did a demonstration of how they herd the sheep, and they had a petting area where we got to pet a sheep!! That is also when I got a phone call that Georgia Tech beat Clemson :)







So then we had some time to kill before the penguin parade. So, we went to the tip of the island to see the nobbies. It was a beach with rounded off black rocks instead of sand. We just stayed at the board walk above since the seagulls were nesting there. There were more seagulls than I have ever seen in one place before. There was also a blowhole which was really neat to watch as a big waves came in. Out 1.5 km from the shore (about a mile) was a rock with 20,000 seals on it. It is the largest colony of them in the world. It was so far out that all you could see was a ton of shiney backs, but it was neat to think of what an awesome sight it would be.







So then we went to see the penguins parade. It is when the sun sets, which was 8:52 pm that night, the penguins come out of the ocean and return to their burrow where there are little baby penguins sitting outside waiting for their parents. The board walk between the beach and the parking lot has lights that shine out and you can see the babys waiting. It was so incredable. And to top it off, there was a shooting star while we were checking out the babys. It was sooo fast, but really pretty as a short flash of red light went zipping by. No camaras were allowed since they would scare the penguins... but they were really cute little ones, and they waddeled up the beach and down the way till they got to their home :)