Our first tour in Australia, Oceania Tours and Safari’s (Travis was our driver), picked us up after lunch. We headed down to the Moonlit Sanctuary where they take injured animals to be rehabilitated. We arrived just as they were closing, so we were a little rushed to get through the exhibits. We visited the Koala Bear area to see the cute little balls of fur getting their meals of Eucalyptus branch’s. Then Leslie got to feed a Kangaroo and a Wallaby. David almost could not pull her away to continue the tour. We also got to see some dingo’s and various birds before we were ushered out the door. Next, we went down to Phillips Island where we saw numerous Wallaby’s in the wild and went down to Surf Beach. The wind was blowing so hard, it was picking up sand and blowing it against us. But the waves were beautiful! Unfortunately, there was no one surfing today. Then it was on to the small village of Cowes where we went to Nates for a bit of “flake and chips” (breaded shark and French fries). Finally, we arrived at the Feather Penguin reserve and joined the hundreds of other people from all over the world on the viewing platform. We had to wait about 30 minutes after dark before the foot tall feather penguins began to waddle out of the surf and walking past the viewing platform to their nests. Some were so fat that they kept falling over. Babies came out of the nests screaming for their parents to come and feed them. There were rangers walking up and down the platform telling people they could not use their cameras as it would disturb the penguins. The flash would blind them and interfere with their hearing. But people were still sneaking pictures and video’s (including us!) when the rangers were not looking (But we had our flash turned off). It was fun to see them waddle by as wave after wave of penguins came ashore. The rangers estimated over 1800 came ashore that night. The penguins will spend several days out at sea eating before coming ashore and walking to their nests to rest for a couple of days before going back out. They must reach a desired weight in order to go through the molting process. They estimate the colony is 40,000 strong. On any particular night, only a portion of the colony is coming ashore.
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| Koala at Moonlit Sanctuary |
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| Koala at Moonlit Sanctuary |
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| Koala at Moonlit Sanctuary - Dinner Time |
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| Kangaroo at Moonlit Sanctuary |
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| Leslie feeding Dash, a baby kangaroo at Moonlit Sanctuary |
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| Leslie feeding a larger Kangaroo |
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| Surf Beach |
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| Feather Penguin heading for its nest |
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