2000/02 Australia trip - Penguin |
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We packed up soon after this and set off north out of the park, heading for the coast. We stopped at Hellyer Gorge for a
late lunch and a walk along the river. We were entertained by fairy wrens that hopped about with their tails up looking a bit like chipmunks, except that they are electric blue.
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Fairy wrens (0.32) |
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From there to the coast we drove past farms and plantations of trees, almost an English landscape with lots of imported trees. We drove along the coast to the town of Penguin, which had a big plastic penguin, flowers all along the beach, and hardly any humans to be seen. We eventually found the campground there, also hidden away. We were the only temporary campers there at first and were able to camp at the edge of a low cliff, just one step from the sea. The sea was noisy, as this is a jagged coastline, all rocks and cormorants and gulls.
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Town of Penguin (3.01) |
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We’d come to Penguin with hopes of seeing penguins, expecting that there was some place the town had set up for viewing them, but when we drove out to the headland where we’d guessed they’d be, there was a sign “Private Property. If you want to see penguins call this number”. So we did, and a lady said yes we could, but there weren’t many to see in February. Come at 9.
We drove up a rough driveway to what seemed to be a large private home at the top of the cliffs, wondering if this was the right place. It turned out that it was, and the lady, Toni, invited us into her living room and introduced us to a couple from Brisbane. The “living room” had a circular glass wall 10 feet high, and we sat in deck chairs looking out over Bass Strait.
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Penguin vigil (18.36) |
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She explained that she and her husband had bought the headland for their dream home, and after the sale, the previous owner had asked what they intended to do with the penguin rookery. “Penguins, what penguins?” It turned out that they had 200 pairs of fairy penguins nesting on their property from November through February each year. They chose to do nothing, just share with the birds, but they found they had researchers and birders wandering all over their property and into their house, thinking it was some kind of Visitor Centre, so they began having private shows by appointment only, and that’s what we were at.
She took the four of us down the cliffs in the dark to the shore where we sat on a log, and she shone a red searchlight out to sea, looking for homeward bound penguins. They’d come in on a wave, stand at the edge until it looked safe, and then stagger up the beach past us, and up the cliff to their burrows, ignoring both the humans and the light. There were only about a dozen, as most of the young had already grown up and gone to sea, so the adults wouldn’t come back until next Spring.
Toni took us up to see the burrows, where the young were attacking the parents to force them to regurgitate food. Lots of violence, with the poor parents sometimes tumbling back down the cliff. (Typical teenage behaviour.) Toni and Lance didn’t allow any flash photography, so we bought the picture shown here.
It turned out to be a great evening, much better than viewing with bus-loads of people. Sadly, this is the kind of thing that just couldn’t happen in the USA. They’d be too scared of somebody falling over a rock in the dark and suing them.