Phillip Island

     This past weekend, a friend and I traveled over to Phillip Island, an island south of Melbourne that is just about a 2 hour bus ride away. There are various wildlife conservations on the island and many fun tourist-y attractions for us study abroad students to see. When we first arrived, there was a pelican feeding going on by the beach. The pelicans are HUGE! I never realized how big they are.

Giant Pelican

Mine mine mine mine mine

There were also Manta Rays that came by to pick up the scraps that the Pelicans left behind:

 We stayed at a really nice hostel, which, while it was really nice, it was unfortunately a 6 mile bike ride away from all of the fun attractions on the island! This was unexpected. Nonetheless, we pounded through and pedaled the 6 miles along the bike path to reach our end goal= the koala conservation! Along the bike path we came across some interesting things...

Yikes!

 And then we got to see the koalas! They were just hanging out, sleeping in the trees, eating Eucalyptus leaves, and swaying in the breeze. They're so chill!

At the koala conservation, we also saw some wallabies walking around:

Then on the way back to the hostel we stopped by a seaside overlook- it was so pretty!

        At night, we went to go see the penguin parade of Fairy (or "Little") Penguins. All the penguins come in after sunset from their long day of floating and fishing in the ocean back to their nests on shore. Small groups of penguins come in together, waiting for other members of their group to join before leaving the water's edge. They huddle real close together, waddle a few steps, get scared then waddle back to the ocean. Then they slowly keep making their way, stopping every once in a while (to look out for predators? to wait for more penguin friends? to make sure they are heading in the right direction? confused? to rest since they are twice their body weight this time of year in their molting stage? no clue... but it was super cute). Then once they make it pretty far along the beach, they make a run for it and suddenly bolt across the sand to their grassy burrows. We got to see them waddling around up close, looking for their nest and squawking at each other in what sounded like a funny squeaky snoring sound. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed of the penguin parade. The flash disrupts the animals, and so they were very strict about not allowing any photos to be taken in the penguin parade area in case someone accidentally didn't turn their flash off. HOWEVER, once we got to the parking lot, we managed to find a penguin on the loose! Signs everywhere said to check under your car for penguins before driving off, and good thing they warned everyone because we found quite a few renegade penguins wandering around the parking lot. I managed to catch a flash-free blurry snapshot of one of these cuties:

          The morning before we left Phillip Island we took a little stroll along the beach, and, while not as exciting as some of the other wildlife on the island, I found a sea urchin shell!