An Island in OZ named Phillip

Last weekend, Mr. Navigator and I had a sort of last minute 2 days 1 night trip to an island in Aussie named Phillip - Phillip Island!!

Phillip Island is famous for it's wildlife and nature, especially the Penguins Parade where you'll get to see Australian Little Penguins (the smallest penguin in the world) returning from fishing the whole day (will talk more about this later in the post). This island is a really quite town, and when I say really quite, I meant ghost town! Well, ghostly till summer comes anyway... The lady from the information centre said that during summer, Phillip Island will be uber packed to a point the island will sink! Ok, I exaggerated the sinking part, but you guys get what I meant, right? So, if you do plan to go visit that island during the summer, be sure to book your accommodation and tickets to parks like Penguins Parade, Koala Conservation Centre, Wildlife park and so on...

So on Friday morning, we started our adventurous trip (you'll see why) at 6am! Washed up, blah blah blah and walked to the train station to catch the train to Stony Point station and from there, got on a ferry to Philip Island.

It was bright and sunny that day, but don't be deceived by the picture below! The wind was CRAAAAZZZYYY!!! So it wasn't warm AT ALL! I was shivering till my back hurt :( But the sun was still good :)

Once we arrived, we went to get Tetleon his doze of coffee and walked to the Information Centre to get some directions and also booked a shuttle bus to visit the Penguins Parade and also our entry ticket. Then off we went to check in at our backpackers - Chill House.
From the 2nd picture in the top collage, you can see that the outside of the backpackers didn't look so inviting. Haha But inside, I thought it was pretty ok. For $30 a night, you can't really ask for much. There's dorms for $30 a night and double room for $75 a night. Breakfast is included but its only the continental breakfast staff like cereal, milk, bread with butter/jam and milo, coffee and tea. But you're welcome to cook in the kitchen too. There's a BBQ pit you can use too. Toilet and bathroom is obviously shared. Oh and they have a pool table there to play with too!

1st stop, we went to A Maze N Things recommended by Lauren. We were lucky that the owner of Chill house, Bonnie was heading to the same place, so we hitched a ride there :) If not, it'll be 5km of Bus no.11 for the both of us, which means by walking.

The entrance of A Maze N Things. They also have a miniature golf there. It is basically a puzzle world. Things that puzzles your mind and cheats your eyes and make you think.

From the collage below, 1st picture was something about gravity, 2nd picture was me getting ready to take a leap slide of faith. It a really really steep slide, considered a high risk activity. But once you slide down, WOAH~~~ its like your heart literally drops down to your stomach. Really fun I tell you! The both of us, did a few times :) 3rd picture is the Illusion room where its like a mirror maze and you have to find your way out. 4th is also a gravity activity, 5th is a really lame treasure chest! We were stuck on it trying to open with the 2 keys provided only to find out that the way to open it is with the magnet in the keychain =.=' and the last picture is also actually suppose to be a game on the wheelchair, but we didn't find out how to operate it :)

This is what I call a cheapskate picture. See how we actually need to pay to get this picture :D

And I thought this was pretty cool...

The activity ends with a large maze outside. The challenge was, enter the maze and find 4 congratulation signs. There's 1 at every flag pole. I found 3 and Mr.Navigator who is suppose to be better than me in directions only found 2, and he cheated!

And this too. It was towards the exit of the place and entrance to the gift shop.. it'll look sooo much better and more realistic without that pink sign board on the right =.='

After A Maze N Things, next stop was to Phillip Island Wildlife Park. There's actually a Koala Conservation Centre right opposite A Maze N Things but I don't recommend to go now. I think they just built it, and there wasn't many koalas in there yet. Anyway, entrance fees is only $10, so you can still try. Think of it as donation for them to make the place a better home for the koalas. But I recommend the wildlife park more cause you pay $15, and you get to see more than just Koalas. And did I mention you get to feed the wallabies, kangaroos, wombats and birds too??

Now, the journey to the wildlife park was funny. We walked from A Maze N Things which was about 2.5km apart from the wildlife park, and so called Mr.Navigator got us lost a bit because he didn't want to listen to me when I said we were on the right track. =.=' Well, at least we didn't walk far towards the wrong direction, so not that tiring to backtrack.

These are some of the animals in the wildlife park.

Koala, Blue-winged Kookaburra, snakes, Echidnas, Birds of pray and Dingoes. The dingoes looked like normal dogs,cute and adorable but let me tell you, enter their enclosure and you're dead!

Kangaroos and Wallabies...

It was his 1st time seeing these cuties in real life, so he was kinda like a little boy again. Feeding and playing with them. And there were a few mother kangaroos carrying their joey in their pouch.

The highlight of my trip to the wildlife park... WOMBAT!!! sadly only spotted 1.. The rest must be in their borrows as they're supposedly nocturnal? But this 1 was roaming about so we fed him. Tetleon didn't know how a wombat looked like so he was like pointing at every other animal asking if it was a wombat. LOL

Wasn't it just ADORABLE?!?!?! But I have to admit, it was really dirty cause it was digging for food. And I finally managed to touch 1 :D BIG SMILES

Last stop of the day was the famous Penguin Parade. Be warned, please layer up before heading there. Its really windy and it's by the beach so it'll be freeezing cold! Like Tetleon's friend said, 'It'll freeze till your bones!' And he wasn't kidding...
And again, it was his 1st time experiencing this. This is my 3rd time. Well, not in Phillip Island but my 3rd time going penguin watching. My 1st and 2nd experience was about 3 years back in South Australia. My 1st experience was just plain bad! It was like a treasure hunt to see penguins. Totally a waste of money, we saw more possums than penguins =.=' 2nd time was not bad, it was funny actually. I got to see them returning from sea, walking up the shore and back to their borrows where their little chicks were calling out for them. And got chased by a baby penguin when I tried to take its picture. I so regret running away from it as I actually had the chance to touch it and not get caught! (we weren't allowed to touch them)

They say third time's a charm. And it was. This 3rd experience of penguin watch was the best! I wonder if my future experiences will beat this. We actually got to see at least 1000 of them returning from the sea, marching up the shore and back to their borrows. Literally like a penguin parade. You can hear their little footsteps going 'tak tak tak' on the wet grounds. Soooo adorable till I wanted to steal 1 home (at least 1)! The sad thing is, we weren't allowed to take pictures of them. But being naughty as usual, we took 1 :D

So why this was an adventurous trip was because of the 5km of walking to get to our destination and the experience we had on this trip. And while we were walking along the highway, the weather, was crazier than Melbourne. Every 5 minute it was rainy and sunny, rainy and sunny. Not to mention it was windy too!

The next day was just a slow day. Woke up got ready, checked out, walked to the town for lunch, roamed around till the ferry came and back to Stony Point where we actually stoned for 1 hour; catch the train back to frankston and back home... But it was a fun filled, animal filled, adventure filled, fruitful footful trip! Don't mind doing it again... :D

Phew~~ finally finished my novel. haha..