Fairy Penguins....

I lucky enough to grab a chance to visit one of the largest colonies of Little penguins recently. What a wonderful trip it was....! I still can not forget charm of little fairy penguins I saw at Phillip Island of Australia.

I took a ticket of day tour bus of Gray Line from Melbourne to visit Phillip Island. In too much of excitement of starting my first weekend trip in Australia I avoided wasting time in eating breakfast or lunch at home, decided to pack and have it in bus instead! I reached bus stop 30 minutes before time even though the pick up point is only at 2 minutes walking distance from my home in Melbourne! 

Before starting the journey, driver smartly announced that any kind of eatables are prohibited inside the bus :(. This ended up me waiting to eat food till the bus driver stopping bus somewhere and giving us chance to have food outside the bus! My Ghanchakkar experience always follow me wherever go!!

Driver stopped first at Churchill Island , its a pictorial small heritage island. I fell in love with the place the moment I stepped down from the bus! Again I forgot to eat till the time I boarded the bus again to continue our journey towards Phillip Island! It was around 4 pm and still I was deprived of food :(!! Its not at all good for my hard earned Fat :)

Our next stoppage was at Koala conservation center in Phillip Island. I determined that before I start journey again from there I will have my food! But same thing happened. I again got lost in the world of Koalas and Wallabies and missed the chance of taking my lunch ended up having only an apple before bus starts!

 I found one interesting information about Koalas there. Koalas sleep almost 20 hours a day! Now I feel I have some competition in this area :( :(!

Ultimately we reached penguin parade visitor center in Phillip island around 6.30 pm. At last I finally got chance to have some food intake so that I can be alive to witness penguin coming out of the sea!! The scene of cute penguins emerging out of sea every sunset and marching ahead towards their burrows was absolutely delight.

The cameras are prohibited inside the visitor gallery of Penguin Parade. They gave reason to us that camera flashes make penguins go blind. A blind penguin can not survive and dies soon! I am sharing few photos which I downloaded from net though. Hope they have taken these photos using night vision cameras without hampering cute penguin's life!

The Little Penguin is the world’s smallest penguin and found only in southern hemisphere of the world. One interesting fact I found related to these penguins which I unnoticed until I read about it. We all are aware popular operating system LINUX!! Have you noticed it's logo? Yes,it's little penguin!

It is said that Linus Torvalds, the original creator of Linux was once bitten by a Little Penguin while on holiday in Australia! This encouraged him to keep this little penguin as official logo of operating system he created!!

I would recommend this place for every tourist coming to visit Melbourne. Its worth to spend a day on Phillip Island and pack life long memories of these little fairies! If you are looking out for an economical but still comfortable trip then day tours operated from many tourist companies from Melbourne City are most convenient and good value for money. All in all it was a good start to my exploring mission in Australia!! Hope I get more such cherishing memories to share here!