2019/11 Australia trip - Phillip Island |
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Thursday November 21st
The forecast was for 39C (102F), so we tried to get the work done in the morning. Edna and Sandie were doing the washing while John and I were cleaning up the back garden and pool. Despite the cover the pool had crud on the surface and bottom and algae in the water. Even with the cleanup we’d have to wait for the chlorine to take effect before we could swim. The temperature got to 41 before a storm with high winds and lots of rain swept through in midafternoon and it dropped to 18C (64F). Sandie barely emptied the washing line in time. The pool was full of crud again.
On the news Victoria had a mixture of fires and power cuts. Mildura, where we’d had the tyre fixed, had been blanketed by a dust storm. We hunkered down and veg’d. I was composing the story of the Saving of Mungo Joey for Facebook.
Friday November 22nd
It was a cooler day with a cold wind. We were going to Phillip Island, about 75 miles south of Mulgrave. Our route took us through Cranbourne, where Lynda and Phil used to live, and past the site of the Big Worm, a display of Gippsland’s giant (up to ten feet long) earthworms. It’s now closed but the building, shaped like a worm, is still there.
We stopped just before the bridge to the island to watch the feeding of the pelicans. 
A kitchen worker comes out from one of the restaurants and tosses out fish remnants. The pelicans obviously know the schedules as they are already waiting. Sting rays came in around the pier too, maybe attracted by the activity.
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Phillip Island pelicans (7.59) |
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We walked a trail in the woods around the Oswin Roberts Reserve ln the hopes of spotting one of the koalas but there are thought 
to be only 40 left on the island out of the thousand that were there in the 1970s. We enjoyed the walk and saw wallabies and galahs and flowers but no koalas.
We had a picnic lunch at Rhyll on the shore, defending our food against the local gulls. This elaborate carving was nearby.
Then we were off to the Nobbies on the opposite side of the island. 
This is where the famous Penguin Parade takes place but not until it’s almost dark and the penguins feel that it’s safe for them to walk up the beach to their burrows. We weren’t staying that late so we drove the dirt roads around the shore looking for penguin burrows and chicks.
First we found these Cape Barren geese and an echidna that stayed above ground long enough for us to see its nose. 
We didn’t want to damage any burrows so we just looked for those that were around the roads. These two burrows 
were typical; one with a chick keeping its eye on us and the other with two chicks squeezed within.
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Nobblies wildlife (4.21) |
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The visitor’s centre is a blot on the landscape; they should never have put it right on the clifftop. 
We walked the trails below, finding more penguin chicks but most of these were in wooden nesting boxes
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Apart from the centre it’s a scenic spot, with jagged rocks, crashing waves, and a blowhole. It’s even prettier when the pig face flowers are in bloom. 
On our way back we stopped at Pyramid Rock where we found this snake.
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Copperhead snake (2.41) |
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It’s called a copperhead, though it’s unrelated to the American copperhead. It’s supposed to be of medium toxicity for an Australian snake, “only” as poisonous as an Indian cobra.