It is always hard to say goodbye to Melbourne and even harder to say goodbye to our good friends Joan and John but we said our farewells in the Doncaster Shopping Town having bought enough maps to get us to Sydney without fear of going the wrong way!

We trawled our way through the Melbourne suburbs to the nearest motorway and began our journey to Phillip Island. It is situated south of Melbourne and indeed on the south coast of Victoria, facing the Bass Strait. As I write I am actually just a few feet from the waters of the Bass Strait as we are waiting for the Penguin Parade to begin - but more of that later!

We stopped for coffee in a small settlement called Tooradin on the bay which Phillip Island backs onto. A little further on from  there we stopped again to climb up the Koo-Wee-Rup swamp tower. This gave us some views over the sea and land we had come from and a plaque told us the directions of different places. The  land was as flat as a pancake and in stark contrast to the contours of NZ!

The Koo-Wee-Rump swamp tower

Finally we reached Phillip Island and crossed the bridge from San Remo to Newhaven. If I tell you that other places on the island include Ventnor, Cowes and Rhyll (two Ls here) you'll see that we feel very much at home! We stopped at the Visitor Centre and booked the special rate combined ticket for 3 places to visit on the island.

Our first visit was to Churchill Island and to an old homestead and farm there. We really wanted somewhere to eat our picnic and this fitted the bill! We were joined by an over friendly magpie but assured him he was getting nothing from us! There were lots of other birds around too and we were pleased to see galahs, Cape Barren geese, spoonbills, egrets and ibis. Later we also saw lots of eastern rosellas and wagtails, who wag their tails from side to side not up and down like ours!

Cape Barren goose

We did a quick tour of the farm and then walked round the top of the island. We saw lots of butterflies again but they were almost impossible to photograph. One of the really excellent things about Australia is its bird life, which is abundant, in contrast to that of NZ. We have woken each morning in Melbourne to the wonderful sounds of currawongs, magpies and lorikeets. Today we have seen a least twenty different species!

Not a pukeko! It's a purple swamp hen in Oz

Our next stop was at the Koala Conservation Centre, where we were able to walk along elevated boardwalks to see the koalas in their eucalyptus trees. We weren't very high up and the koalas were mostly much higher up but one in particular we were able to get quite close to. It was very enjoyable but not quite as good as seeing them completely in the wild, as we have done on past visits! We did see some wild wallabies though.

Guess what - a sleepy koala!

Time was moving on and we decided to check in at our motel - a fairly standard one and no great views this time but fine for one night. We had to have an early meal as we were going to the Penguin Parade in the evening and went to a recommended restaurant (by Joan and John) for a very good pasta.

We arrived nice and early at the penguin place and were able to secure "seats" at the end of a row and near the front - almost on the beach. The seats were in fact rather uncomfortable benches on concrete and we ended up sitting on them for over 2 hours! Nevertheless we had an exciting and very rewarding evening! I should explain that the Little Penguin comes ashore at dusk every day to return to its burrow on land. Actually they don't all return every day as they often spend a week or more at sea but enough return each evening to make quite a spectacle and in this case one that is worth exploiting commercially.

Because of this we had been a bit sceptical about the whole experience - especially as we have seen Little Penguins on a couple of occasions before. However I have to say we really enjoyed seeing the penguins suddenly emerge from the waves, wait till there was a group of them and then scurry up the beach  to the safety of the bushes behind the beach. We must have seen at least 70 penguins from our seats and then were able to see and hear them in and around their burrows as we returned up the boardwalk. We got very close to them but unfortunately were unable to photograph them due to restrictions by the authorities.

It was quite late when we got in - gone 10.30 and we still had all the blogs to post that we couldn't do when we were in Melbourne! Anyway apologies for not getting this one done and we have some problems tonight but hopefully will be able to publish this one if not the next one!