A wild life today

 Today was a tour day

We planned on taking the free city circle tour of downtown Melbourne at 10am this morning

We wandered up the street and waited at the bus stop with a couple of other people. We got there slightly before 10am and it still had not come by 10:40 am so we gave up. As we were to get picked up at 12:30pm for today’s tour.

We went back to our hotel and got things ready for our tour, then went out to find lunch. We decided to eat here on the name alone

I was pleasantly surprise at how good it was. Asta definitely approved 

It very much looked how I pictured a 1940’s diner

Our guide picked us up for our small group tour and we headed here first

I had not feed the kangaroos at any of the other Australian animal parks we have been to, but our guide gave us food to feed them today, so I figured, why not

We also got a really good look at the kookaburra 

A Tasmanian Devil

These huge geese

And the new like ones

Including this wallaby and the baby in her pouch, the one whose head is peeking out near the ground

This is the most active that I have seen a koala 

This dingo is just so beautiful

And it was snack time for the wombat 

We had a couple of scenic stops. One was at this lovely windy beach of Cape Woolamai

The water bill as a lovely blue and the beach sand was soft 

Next we drove around Phillips Island to the surfing beach, where a number were enjoying the waves

The area we had driven through to get to the island after we left Melbourne, was dairy farm country 

We next stopped at seal rock lookout. It is nesting season for the seagulls and they dotted the hillside by the board walk.

These goose are all over on this island, but almost extinct elsewhere

We were told these Rocks house a large fur seal colony, but as they are a mile off shore and this was the best my camera could get, I will just have to believe what I was told

They had a small nice visitor center there

We then drove a ways down the coast and had another picture stop to show how rugged the volcanic coast is

This is the bay right next to the one we went to for the penguin parade

This is the bay we were going to for the penguin parade as seen from our photo stop

We got to the visitor center in time to grab some dinner before our ranger guided tour

These penguins are burrowing ones and where the soil is extra hard, the ranger have made some wooden burrows

This is another of the birds they preserve is helping to come back from near extinction by getting rid of the predators that man brought in. Mainly the foxes

This family of endangered geese are out for a pre dusk stroll

Usually these penguins do not come ashore until dusk or a little after and then mainly in groups as hawks and birds of prey are their biggest land worries.

There were also some wallabies out for an early evening

These are a couple of other early birds using the safety of the raised walkway. These birds are, when full grown, less than a foot tall and weight only a pound or two.

This is the beach they will come in on

We had some awesome sets, but these the last pictures we were allowed as it was almost dark and no pictures were permitted after dusk as it disorients the penguins if flashes go off. They just band all photography so there would not be any problem. We sat here for about twenty minutes and watched as they came ashore in groups of 70 to over one hundred. They are quite noisy also as they gather in the shallows and come ashore in masses. After twenty minutes we walked back to the visitor center on these walkways with penguins walking right by them, so we got up close views. It was so fun

Back at the center Asta posed with a taxidermy penguin so I could show how small they are. The kangaroo is only about 6 or 7 inches tall

I wanted to grab a postcard of the penguins, but they were sold out, so I got this magnet instead.

The colony on Phillips Island is the largest in the world of these fairy penguins, who are the smallest of the 18 different kinds of penguins. They believe this colony numbers about 40,000 on the island. But in one night one fox can kill 40 of them. Also only 1 in 5 chick live to the age they can reproduce. 

We got back nearer 10pm and I am just getting this out before heading off to bed.