Penguin Parade

We sailed about 58 miles north from Melbourne to Phillip Island. It is a somewhat predator free island known for its Colony of Little Blue (fairy) Penguins. Viking scheduled us to see the "Penguin Parade," a nocturnal event when the adult Penguins emerge from the sea and travel to their burrows to awaiting chicks. They tendered 700 of us to the island in groups of 100 (capacity of the tender) to watch the Penguins walk from the sea. I imagined the whole group of 800 Penguins running from the waves of the ocean en masse. In reality they come out in groups of about 5 to about 30 between 9 and 11 pm. They advanced haltingly, looking for potential predators. Then they trudged from the beach to the sandy, grassy dunes containing their burrows with hungry chicks. As we walked back from the observation stand to the visitor center on the 1000 foot boardwalk we could see cute little creatures close up walking through the sand beside the boardwalk.

In the morning we walked around the island finding more birds, a brush-tailed possum and wallabies. The Australians are conserving the possum; the New Zealanders are exterminating it because it attacks the birds native only to New Zealand.Read more