![\"I](\"http:\/\/www.rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/11\/IMG_0313.jpg\")
<\/a>Of course we were drawn to birds…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n When we got back on the bus to head to the next stop, Graham took a moment to get everyone to sing happy birthday to Matt. \u00a0I didn’t plan it, didn’t even mention it was his birthday so that was a fun surprise. \u00a0Matt shared later that Graham had asked him which one of our party was celebrating a birthday, so I assume the travel company let them know.<\/p>\n From the wildlife sanctuary we went to the Churchill Island Heritage Farm, or something like that. \u00a0There we stopped for a spot of tea, and walked through the living history farm. \u00a0They demonstrated dog assisted sheep herding, sheep shearing, and other farm craft. \u00a0We were distracted by the birds.<\/p>\n After the farm we were off to a Koala sanctuary, because it’s always all about the Koala. \u00a0There cute and all, but they aren’t that exciting. \u00a0All they do is eat eucalyptus, which is a poison, and then sleep to conserve energy while they process it. \u00a0They are like the Bene Gesserit witches of the animal kingdom in a constant water of life ritual.<\/p>\n When we were done with the Koala’s, which for me was about 5-minutes after I saw one, but for the rest of the group was about an hour later, we finally headed off to the Phillip Island center. \u00a0This was right of the coast and the wind was pretty fierce. \u00a0The first point of interest was the nobbies, which is their term for the rugged coastline\u00a0I think, I don’t know, it looked like the Oregon Coast line. \u00a0Since it is spring there, the seagulls were nesting and their were a bunch of baby seagulls that were pretty cute.<\/p>\n As the sun started to reach the horizon we reboarded the bus and headed over to the penguin parade viewing area. \u00a0We had purchased the Penguin Plus package and if you ever go and see this natural phenomenon, spring for the plus. \u00a0Essentially there are two viewing areas, a big grandstand, and smaller wooden bleacher. \u00a0We were on the smaller bleacher.<\/p>\n By now you may be wondering what the heck a penguin parade is, so I’ll sum it up for you. \u00a0You are basically watching the penguins come home after a long day out on the water. \u00a0And yes it is as adorable as it sounds. \u00a0Once the sun sets a group of about 20 of them emerge from the surf and waddle onto the beach. \u00a0They stand there and check things out, look for predators, etc. \u00a0Then they run back and do a belly skid into the water. \u00a0A couple of minutes later some more of them emerge from the water and scan the area. \u00a0If anything spooks them, and they are pretty skittish, they flee back to the water.<\/p>\n Finally a group of them decides they are brave enough to go in and they head for the rocks, amble up and over a 50 foot span of low rocks before they climb the sandy hill and pause right by the small platform that we were on. \u00a0That is what you get with the penguin plus! \u00a0By the time they reach the platform they have\u00a0gotten through the dangerous part of the hike so they take a little load off and preen themselves before they continue their trek into the hills to their individual burrows to go feed their young. \u00a0No one is allowed to take pictures because that disorients them, so you will need to go to the website to see what we saw.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.penguins.org.au\/attractions\/penguin-parade\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today we are doing\u00a0a more traditional wildlife tour in wildlife parks and conservation centers on Philip Island. \u00a0The one true wild experience will be the penguin parade. \u00a0 \u00a0So we wasted time in the morning until we had to meet our tour bus at 10:40. Our tour bus driver was Graham, and he came with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubschlager.com\/angie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>