The Penguin Parade

March 10, 2010


Well the weather certainly hasn’t favoured us, windy, cold and highly variable – but we are undaunted and sally forth regardless. This morning we wandered down to Federation Square which is the transportation hub of the city as well as the cultural centre. We found an internet hot spot, parked Connor on Facebook and went wandering. Melbourne CBD (city center) is a typical grid design with wide open N/S running streets (3 lanes each way) alternating with narrower streets. It is then cut E/W with streets and lanes used by people, cars and electric trams alike. The naming goes thus: Flinders St., Little Flinders St., Bourke St. Little Bourke St., Collins St., Little Collins St., etc. The rationale for this design was to accommodate Bullocks carts which were used to transport all sorts of goods during the gold rush boom of the 1800’s. While the layout worked great for ox carts, it wasn’t great for people, so the population which was booming started infilling with little laneways. Many of these laneways are now covered over and called Arcades. You can literally wander through mazes of these things winding all through the downtown core. They can be a simple lane with graffiti (think of a Rick Mercer rant) to beautiful mosaic tiled ornately gilded tunnels. This is where you find many of the bars, café’s galleries, designer shops, etc. You could spend weeks wandering the CBD and still be finding little nooks and crannies you missed. Melbourne is really an eclectic mix of the modern and the traditional and a joy to explore. From the High Victorian architecture of the parliament buildings and Flinders St. Station, the neo-classical stone of the State Library of Victoria to the incredibly modern atrium at Federation Square you cannot walk a block without seeing a stunning building or art work.

The afternoon was a different experience entirely, time to get out of the city and see some wildlife. We were picked up after lunch by our tour guide Bruce (‘allo Bruce) and four other adventures and headed due south to Phillip Island. Phillip Island is dedicated to all sorts of wildlife conservation. Birds, kangaroos and wallabies, fur seals, koalas and most notably the Fairy or Little Blue penguins, the smallest penguins in the world (they are less than a kilo and about 40 cm high). Along the route we stopped for high tea at a working dairy farm (fresh clotted cream – yum) and stopped often to view wallabies, kangaroos and birds - the Australian Gray Goose has an amazing chartreuse green bill. We visited the Phillip Island Koala reserve where they have a protected group of about 40 koalas being studied in a natural gum tree (eucalyptus) preserve. You walk through the forest on raised boardwalks and get quite close to the Koalas in the trees. Koalas are cute and cuddly to look at however that’s about it. They spend 20 hours a day sleeping and the rest of it eating. The most exciting thing a koala did for us was chew! But we did see about a dozen of them in their natural habitat. On to a kangaroo preserve where we watched the alpha male fight off challengers to his harem then to a seafood supper of local catch looking over the crashing waves on the volcanic coastline – stunning!

The highlight of the evening however was the dusk penguin parade. The penguins dig small burrows all over the western point of the island which is now a nature preserve. Much of their time they simply stay at sea, fish, eat and sleep on the waves. They come to shore to mate, raise their chicks and hide for 17 days a year as they moult and grow a new set of feathers. When they do spend time on land they rise before dawn and walk to the sea in burrow groups for mutual protection from hunting birds (there’s safety in numbers). They come out at dusk in the same groups they went in with – this is called the penguin parade. The conservation area has set up stands and boardwalks right along the penguin paths lit with blue green light which penguins are colour blind to. We bundled up at dusk and waited for the little blue buggers to come to shore. They pop out of the ocean in groups of tens or hundreds, waddle up over the rocks to the sand, pause for a rest break and to listen for the calls from chicks. Then they waddle along well used penguin paths in groups to their burrows. The older penguins have status and get the burrows closest to the shore. Young penguins travel as much as a kilometer to the furthest burrows. The sound of calling, growling and trilling penguins combined with the comical parade (some of the penguins are so fat they cannot balance upright) is just a delight. You cannot touch or photograph however the penguins are so unafraid of people that they waddle right along the boardwalk looking at the people like little penguin tourists. The penguins hoot and call for a couple of hours as they socialize, mate and feed their young then everyone beds down for the night and it starts all over the next morning. We were all left with permanent grins watching the parade of the penguins then fell asleep in the van during the long ride back to Melbourne.