Phillip Island

I decided to go for a run this morning as the kids were slowly waking up in the morning. I headed out and ran along the Yarra river and back along Flinders Street alongside the beautiful railway station building. I even made a full circle around the Melbourne Cricket Ground along the larger-than-life sculptures of Dennis Lillee, Don Bradman, Shane Warne and others. I ran for 30 minutes in a constant drizzle and estimate I did about 4 miles.

After spending time going over all the Gray Line brochures last night to plan our trips to Phillip Island, Sovereign Hill, and Healesville, we realized that the coach trips to each of these venues would be over $300 for the three of us, even with the kids at half price. We then decided that given my increased confidence about driving on the left and even in city traffic,  the best bet would be to rent a car here and drive to these places and just cover the entrance fees ourselves. Plus, we would have the freedom to spend as much time as we wanted in each place.

So, we headed out in the morning with a plan to eventually rent a car and go to Phillip Island. We took the City Circle Tram (free tram) to Queen Victoria Market, which is a large pavilion filled with thousands of stalls hawking souvenirs, knick knacks, fruits & vegetables, meats, and more. By the time we got there, it was already 11:30 AM due to a late start combined with a bunch of broken down trams which left us waiting at the tram station for 25 minutes. Still, we skimmed the outskirts of the market and promised to come back there to browse at a more leisurely pace. Then, we stopped at the food court and purchased some food (I chose a roasted vegetable pizza while Sheila had a chunky beef pie. Jay decided he wanted mini pancakes with ice cream). It was all quite delicious. I am becoming convinced that the Aussie/NZ folks have figured out some secret to great baking that they are hiding from North Americans. Even the crust of the pizza was more delicious than I've ever experienced.

We then walked to the car rental place and rented a Hyundai Accent from Europcar and drove out to Phillip Island. It was a fairly pleasant drive with some beautiful views of the bay. We got to the "penguin parade" in time and sat down on the bleachers waiting for the penguins to show. Finally, the first batch arrived at about 5:50 PM. The penguins are even smaller than I remember from our trip in 2000 and extremely cute. Unfortunately, no photography of any kind is allowed there. So, you'll have to settle for the painted murals on the wall of the welcome center. After the penguins came on to the beach and waddled past us, we went on the boardwalk back to the welcome center and got great close-up views of many of the birds. We even managed to catch a couple of the penguins mating (even though, as the ranger told us, it isn't really mating season). It was a lot of fun and we spent a couple of hours with the penguins.

We got back to the hotel at about 10:30 PM and the kids went straight to bed. Jay slept almost all the way back from Phillip Island and Sheila dozed off during part of the drive. Overall, another busy, event-filled day. And tomorrow, we head to Sovereign Hill!