Koala's and Pengiuns on Philip Island

20-1-2010 (Wedensday)

Wow that was the first night in our campervan, we all slept pretty good. The caravan park where we are staying is called San Remi Caravan park and costs $ 25,- per night.

Today is our Philip Island day, but first off to the local playground. We will publish a book on best playground in Australia when we are back.
In San Remo, next to the bridge to Philip Island, we watched a whole bunch of Pelicans. Our first wildlife of the day.

Around noon we headed for the Island stopping at the Information Office. We bought a pass for the three highlights of the Island: Old farm, Koala park and Penguin parade.
The farm was the first stop. We really find it fantastic that we bring our house (campervan) everywhere. The farm was nice, we could hold baby ducks and rabbits and see a lot of farm animals like cows, sheep and horses.
Sharai is afraid of most animals and when she held a baby Rabbit (Nijntje) and the little one started to climb, she screamed and loud as she’s able to. From that moment on, she didn’t want to hold nothing no more.
We also saw a chicken with here chicks, she enjoyed the idea that mummy chicken was taking care of here babies (the next morning she talked about it).

Next we drove up to the Koala park, we had the most amazing encounter with a Koala. We where standing less than a meter from a Koala. We have good pictures of that. We also saw a baby Koala. Zeb thinks babies are cute. Koala’s were brought to the island some 100 years ago. The Island belonged to a former mayor of Melbourne, Mister Samuel Ames.

Around 4 we drove to a beach called Red Rocks next to the main village of Philip Island, Cowes. Driving up there Ruben saw a Kangaroo crossing the road.
The beach was a quite isolated beach, really beautiful. The way we hope to encounter more beaches.
After digging a ‘swimming pool’ in the sand and a small swim we got back to the campervan. We bbqed at the beach. In Australia they have electrical BBQ everywhere and you can use these for free. This to prevent bush fires.
Ruben prepared the best hotdogs, the whole family loved.

At 7 we went to the Penguin parade, hoping the kids would sleep for a couple of hours till the Penguins would come ashore. They didn’t, so we went in early.
This was really one of the most amazing things we have ever witnessed:
On a kind of stand set up in the dunes we saw almost 200 Penguins come back from a day fishing to feed their wives and Chicks. Then we saw them wondering around in the dunes looking for their burrows. The Penguins here are called little Penguins and they are, about 30-40 centimeters high.
Sharai fell asleep during the Penguin parade, Zeb stayed awake till they end, around 11. One penguin wasn’t able to find his home (burrow) and Zeb was really sad about it. The morning after he asked Sharon if everything went well after all. Sharon told him that he came home safe and sound.

We drove our home back to the caravan park and had a good night sleep.

GREAT CHOICE WE WENT TO PHILIP ISLAND!

21-1-2010 (Thursday)

Early wake up, we tend to rise earlier in the campervan then we did in the hotels. Ruben did some morning shopping and we had a nice breakfast in front of the campervan.

We decided to drive to Lake Entrance today, a 3,5 hour drive (250KM). We had a few choices from the big campsite book. The first we called from the car had vacancy.
We arrived at around 5 in Wateredge park ( a big4 park: big4 is a kind of chain.)

The park is nice, we had our bbq. At the central bbq place you meet other people cooking. Some daily talk about the bbq, the cricket, where we are from and some advice for next place to visit for us.