Penguins come home!

It's now Friday morning and I'm still updating this blog from earlier in the week. I've finally finished the entry on Tower Hill Reserve, which I'd left in draft form - you can find it several entries back (dated 4th April). I've also just finished the one on Maru wildlife park, which I had also left in draft form.

After Maru wildlife park, we drove on to Phillip Island where we went for a walk along Woolamai Beach in the south-east of the island. I walked along with John, from Belfast, who I'd got talking to on the bus. We found a very peculiar looking dead fish on the beach. I took a photo and later showed it to Lee, the tour guide, who identified it as a Puffer Fish. It was almost circular with a funny little pursed lips - almost like a beak - and a small tail, and was covered in spines - apparently very poisonous. There were also three or four dead penguins on the beach. I took a photo of a dead penguin too, which John thought was a bit morbid. It hadn't been mauled or anything, just looked as if it was lying down on its back. Well ... ok ... so it did look a bit lifeless.
We had an early dinner (4.30 p.m.!) at Amaroo Park YHA in Cowes - where I was booked in for the night. Cowes is the main town of the island and has the longest avenue of Cypress trees in the southern hemisphere. These are loved by the locals for the shade they provide and a recent proposal by the Council to cut them down (presumably as part of the backlash against non-indigenous plant species) was met with a public outcry and petitions. So the trees remain. There seem to be a lot of cypresses on the island as a whole.
After dinner we all (about ten people) got back on the bus to go on to the Penguin Parade in the south-west of the island. On the way, we saw some more kangaroos and some wallabies and viewed Seal Rocks and the Nobbies.

Phillip Island is world-famous for its colony of Fairy Penguins. Apparently, there is a smaller colony in Port Melbourne, but they don't get much publicity. Fairy Penguins are about 30 cm high. They differ from other penguins in that they wait until dusk each night before returning to the shore and to their burrows. They do this to avoid predators. They come in at dusk every night, regardless of the tide or the weather. On the principle that there is safety in numbers, the penguins stick together in groups. They travel in a 'raft', navigating towards the shore by sight. Every now and again the raft will surface to check that they are on course for whatever landmarks they have identified. We saw one such raft from the shore, faintly visible in the fading light as a dark patch on the ocean.

On the way to the Penguin Parade Centre, Lee pointed told us that the signposts to the centre used to say 'Penguin Parade at dusk'. They were changed because non-English-speaking tour guides were forever presenting bemused islanders and others with maps and asking where 'dusk' was.

The tide was in on Monday evening when we went to the Penguin Parade centre, which was beneficial for both us and the penguins. We were closer to the shoreline and in a better position to see the penguins as they rolled in on the tide. The penguins were closer to the beach and didn't have so far to waddle in order to reach their burrows.

At dusk, the ocean is monochrome: black water and white spray. As the penguins too are monochrome (actually blue-black) it is difficult to distinguish penguins from water. Several times I thought I could see a group arriving, but there was nothing but white foam on the incoming waves. Then suddenly there was the first group, a cluster of small figures separating from the spray, shaking the water from their wings and beginning their unsteady waddle up the beach. They looked like besuited office workers, trudging home from a suburban station at the end of a long day.

Being privileged guests - i.e. with a tour - we got to go on the 'Penguins Plus' viewing deck: less people and closer to the shore. I'm hopeless on distances, but I suppose the viewing deck was perhaps 100 metres from the sea. The penguins came waddling up the beach towards the viewing deck and then alongside the boardwalk. Every now and again they'd stop for a bit of a quack or a squawk and a quick preening session. They are nearing the moulting season, so they all looked quite fat. When they moult I think they stay in their burrows, as they would be unable to go to sea then.

As they advance up the beach, they gradually separate off, each heading for his (or her?) own burrow in the sand dunes, greeted by further squawking. Lee told me that the burrows may be as far as 2 km from the shore. Well, it seems to me that by the time the penguin had walked 2 km it would be time to turn around and head back to the sea again, although they do move faster than you might expect for an animal with such short legs.

It is forbidden to take photographs of the penguins, because they get extremely distressed by flashes - so much so that they vomit up their food on to the beach, which means that their chicks don't get fed - with disastrous consequences. At first it was just flash photography that was forbidden, but people went ahead and used their flashes anyway, so now there is an outright ban on photography. The centre has cashed in on this by selling a selection of photographs in the shop, at $1.70 each.