Philip Island

The small town of Queenscliff where the ferry to 
Sorrento leaves from.

Phillip Island and the Penguin Parade:

The wind was a bully today, there was a storm warning out for the coast with winds up to 50knots, yeh, not fun on a bike, very noisy too.   Riding the bike is so like being on the sailboat, you still have to deal with weather conditions as you are exposed to the elements, hmm maybe we will have to pick up another sport.

Anyway it was a nice ride other than that, the scenery was pretty, we headed for Phillip Island, not too far a distance to ride today only about 200km, which is a short day for us but with the intense weather it was just as well.  Most of the ride was along the coast road which made it worse as there was no shelter from the winds.

We catch the ferry to Sorrento 

There are so many nice little towns to stop off in around the coast of Australia its the best for that, we had to catch a 40min ferry to cross the rip, (this is area where the bay of Melbourne drains into the ocean), so that we didn’t have to ride around the peninsula and that was great, it was a multihull and cost only $38.00 it goes every hour on the hour so well worth it.

At this time of year they are not very busy

We love riding on the country roads again

Over the Bridge to Phillip Isl

We check into a Spa Suite in Cowes

Winter rates help with our budget
 we will only stay one night $90.

Off to see the Penguins on Parade

Highlight of the day was a trip to see the “Little Penguins” on Phillip Island!  These little guys are adorable, there is a colony of 60,000 of them on this coast, about 27,000 can be seen from this reserve, their predators are the eagles and large birds and the European Foxs.  A fox can catch up to 30 penguins a day so at the moment they are trying to trap all the foxs and take them away and they have been successful in that so far as the colony is growing.  Can you imagine when a Penguin spots a fox, its little legs have no chance of outrunning the beast.

A very popular souvenir with the Asians

The Penguins return after dark
and the weather gets very cold

People do actually run over them in the car park!

You should see these little guys, we went down to the waters edge at dusk and there was some big waves on the ocean today, you start to see like a bubbling of the waters after the surf and then a few seconds later you get a bunch like 20-80 in a group of penguins scurry up the beach, they have been waiting in the surf until they think it is dark enough not to be seen by the birds flying above, then they rush up into their dens, some have to travel over 1km every night to get home and not get caught.  

They go into the water every day,  very early just before sunrise, they will swim all day sometimes diving over 1000 times to eat half their weight in fish before returning back in the evening to feed their young.

These little guys only weight between 1000g -1100g, they are actually dark blue and white not black and white as i always thought.

Phillip Island Nature Park is home to over 27,000 Little Penguins, Summerland Peninsula provides ideal habitat for breeding and the waters of Bass Strait, Western Port and Port Phillip Bay ensure a vast fishing ground.

Over the last 80 years, Penguins have disappeared from 80% of their former breeding areas on Phillip island.  This is due to predation, habitat destruction and other human activities. 

A more than life size "Little" Penguin.
As you can imagine we were not allowed 
to photograph the Penguins, all those 
camera flashes would surely upset the little 
creatures.