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Phillip Island, part one (or; The Birds)

Off out of to the country again, Wednesday morning we check out of our second Melbourne hotel. We cheekily leave a bunch of our luggage at the hotel we stayed in a week ago; they’re in a much more convenient place for picking it up again, and we knew from last time that they don’t ask for proof of residence.

Erin’s mum lives on Phillip Island, a couple of hour’s drive southeast of Melbourne. We took the train to meet her half way and then there were some, as expected, emotional greetings. We’d last seen her over a year ago when she came to London; not as bad as if it was since the last time we were in Australia but still quite a long time! She took us back home, I took some pictures. Phillip Island is pretty!
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Dianne (that’s Erin’s mum, obviously) knows I like Christmas so she’d got some Christmas decor up a bit earlier than she otherwise would have. She also had a present for me – a Christmas penguin!

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Chris and Raam were on the island on Wednesday as well, separately from us. It’s quite a popular tourist destination, various nature things to see – fairy penguins, koalas, nice views, etc. The penguin parade (hundreds of fairy penguins coming home to their burrows for the night) in particular is a huge draw, and Chris and Raam were going to go watch. We’d seen the parade last time we were in Australia and didn’t feel the need to do it again, but we did meet up with the guys for dinner beforehand.

Good food was had. For main I had the barramundi, Erin had chicken with some delicious potato croquettes. Unfortunately while my dessert (icecream sundae) was delicious there were a lot of disappointed faces when the homemade sticky date pudding turned out to not be available. Woe is me! Erin had the mousse, there didn’t seem to be any complaints there.
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The restaurant was quite near the koala conservation centre, there was a really creepy statue thing outside.
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The restaurant was only 3km from the house; I’d walked there before dinner, Erin walked back with me. Found some geese on the way.
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Chris and Raam were also staying the night with us. Raam was definitely having kittens over how cute the penguins were when they got back later in the evening. We were surprised that he hadn’t tried to bring one home, to be honest.

Thursday morning was the start of a really beautiful day. Sunshine, clear blue skies, that kind of thing. I went for a run, felt good.

Forewarning: we did quite a lot on Thursday, there are a ton of pictures in the rest of this post!

Originally Chraam were supposed to head back into Melbourne fairly early but they changed plans a bit so they could get a bit more out of the island. We tagged along, I was happy to get some excellent views and various wildlife.

First stop was a trip to the Nobbies, an area in the northwest corner of the island.
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On the drive there we spotted an echidna crossing the road, everyone out of the car to give chase!
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Lots of nice scenery
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Seagulls, and babies!
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Everyone was in full camera-taking formation
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Some posed pictures
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After the Nobbies was a short trip to see the daily pelican feeding. I was very surprised by how large they were; I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting but it wasn’t that! Watching their jaws open as wide as they could was interesting, too. Some decent action shots here too; I took a couple of hundred speculative pictures of the feeding with exactly that hope!
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Lunchtime was at quite a nice little cafe close to the beach. Erin had corncakes, I had mushroom arancini with sausages. Yum yum yum.
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There was some posing afterwards.
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Ahem, we found some more pelicans…
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One last stop with Chris and Raam – to the motor racing circuit on the island. Not to see any racing, of course, but instead to see the kangaroos! They’re not native to the island but for some reason there’s a colony of them by the circuit.
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That was all for Chraam, we said our goodbyes and they headed back into Melbourne. We’ll see them again in the new year after they’re back in London from their round-the-world trip. Bastards.

We walked to the koala centre next and met up with Dianne again. On the way I came across an enormous ant. These things freak me out.
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Koalas, they’re a bit cute! The koala place is a walk around the habitat where a whole bunch of koalas live, and of course it’s an hour’s game of playing Where’s Wally but with koalas instead. It’s pretty tricky; they blend in quite well with the trees, they don’t really move, so they’re surprisingly stealthy for fat little balls of fur. We did quite well; there were supposed to be 5 koalas in each of the two main areas, we spotted 4 and 6 (bonus koala?).

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We had icecream.

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I walked back to the house again; nice day, not too far, and I was happy to get some time catching up with some podcasts.

Dinner was out to a fish and chip shop, apparently the best on the island. I was looking forward to this, and it’ll probably turn into a tradition, because we went to the same place last time. Interestingly the default fried fish in Australia is flake, which is shark.
Pictured is fish, chips, potato cake, pumpkin cake, fish cake. Mmmmm yummy. The fish cake (which was also potato-based) was probably my favourite of the lot.

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When we were done eating we obviously had to give any leftovers to the ever-present seagulls. Erin and Dianne were delighted to hang back and leave me to my fate while taking pictures. I was definitely flocked!

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Escaping with my life I walked most of the way home again, about 6km or so. Took some nice sunset shots.
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We fit quite a lot in today, saw plenty of things and it was nice and active which I obviously like. Slept pretty well!


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