Phillip Island, where we stay up late to sit and wait

 Today we have an unusual tour… watching penguins return to land from being in the sea …Summerland beach is the place to be to watch this amazing feat. There is no dock for us to use tonight so we will tender this port. That entails us all boarding the tender/life boats and being whisked away to a small dock 

Arriving at Phillip Island

A peek inside the tender

 

The pilot sits up high and looks out the upper windows while controlling the tender.Al looks pretty serious, huh?

After getting off the dock, there is a beautiful wooden sculpture commemorating the Ferry Captain. It is carved from a big Cyprus tree that was hundreds of years old and finally came down in a heavy wind in 2016. For many years the island could only be reached by a ferry that sailed across the bay in good wether and bad. Its a beautiful sculpture to see up close.

 We had a short ride to get to the Penguin Parade. This is the largest colony of this little penguin.

When we get to the penguin area, there will be no photos allowed. The little guys spook easily and the possibility that someone will use a flash would scare them back into the sea where they would have problems. They need to make sure they return to their burrows every few days.  The reserve its self is interesting. Two decades ago the numbers were decreasing and it was felt the housing developments built nearby was one cause of the decline. The National government took action over the next years to purchase all the houses on the cliff above the site where the penguins come ashore and tore them down.I can’t imagine the US doing something so dramatic! It worked though! The penguin colony has increased by the thousands.

We could take pictures until dusk. Along the trail to get to the sea we saw lots of wildlife. Here were a couple of Wallabies just ignoring us and going about their evening.

 

Interesting terrain at dusk

Waiting

 Shortly after this we needed to turn our cameras off and all that was left to do was watch for them.  The excitement when they finally emerged was intense.  They were comical, intense and down right cute. Ive grabbed some picture off website of the Penguin Parade national conservancy. Believe me, this are very accurate as to what we saw

 Aren’t they cute?

We have a friend who took this video of the little penguins walking to their burrows while on their ways to the bus.

Anyway, we stayed to watch a few clusters (they wait till there are a group of them before they are ctually move across the beach) head to their couches/burrows and then walked along the trail back to our buses.  It was a great evening and when we returned to the dock to catch our tender back to the anchored ship we were met by Viking staff with mulled wine to offer us and sugar donuts! Its those little things that make us love this company! We loaded into the tender and headed back to the ship. It was a little weird not being able to see anything but the lights of the ship in the distance.