June 13, 2016
Vanderbilt’s bowling team is in the midst of an Australian tour. Today senior Tori Ferris walk us through her hectic — but enjoyable — day that included a stop at the Maru Animal park and a visit to Phillip Island, among other things.
Hello Everyone! Today was such an action-packed day, and it was my personal favorite so far.
Even though we didn’t have to leave until 10 a.m., we were all up by 7, if not earlier, because we are struggling to adjust to the time change. Our lack of sleep didn’t stop us today as we visited the Maru Animal Park, stopped for fish and chips at San Remo Fishermans Co-op, enjoyed chocolate at the Panny’s chocolate factory, and finally waddled over to Phillip Island to see the fairy penguins. We were told to “rug up” as they say here since today would be the coldest day we’ve had here and we would be experiencing the Antarctic breeze while at Phillip Island.
Our hour and a half trek to the day’s activities was well worth the wait once we pulled into the Maru Animal park, where we saw dingoes, wallabies, kangaroos, koalas, peacocks, and alpacas. While there we got the chance to feed and pet the wallabies and kangaroos in the open field area. We also learned about dingoes and koalas from the park rangers. Some of us even got our picture taken with a koala while petting it. Did you know koalas sleep for 18-20 hours a day because of their leaf diet and the particular leaves that they eat take 3 days to digest?! Well, neither did we until this visit to the animal park. Before leaving we stopped in the gift shop to pick up some must-have wildlife souvenirs.
After the animal park we enjoyed freshly fried fish and chips by the water and then ventured to Pannys chocolate factory. This was exciting for most of us — I mean, who doesn’t like chocolate?! We played games, had some free samples, and even designed our own little piece of chocolate if we wanted. Once our bellies were full we had another drive to the Nobbies lookout area in hopes of seeing seals on the rocks. Some of us faced the brisk wind to walk all the way down the boardwalk to look out on the water towards Antartica and hopefully see some seals but we did not. This wasn’t too disappointing for us since we knew we were about to see penguins so we jumped back on the bus and headed to Phillips Island!
We were all so excited to see the “fairy” penguins as they are called for their small stature. They are the smallest of the 17 penguin species and have blue and white feathers rather than the typical black and white. Every night they scurry out of the cold ocean water after a long day of fishing and walk through the sand into their burrows for the evening.
The best views of the penguin parade are on the far corners of the seating area so you know that we had to grab the seats in that area. The park rangers warned us to not take any pictures because it could harm the penguins. We had to wait until the sun was setting right before dark to see the penguins begin to come out of the water, but once they started swimming out of the water and waddling into their homes we could not contain our excitement. We “oohed” and “ahhhed” over their every little movement.
After the parade we hopped back on the bus for a two-hour ride back to the hotel which gave me ample time to write this for you all. As I look back on today, I think we can all agree that today was one of our favorite days so far.
That’s all for now. We need our rest as tomorrow we leave early in the morning to jet set to yet another fabulous Australian city, Cairns, where we hope to see warmer weather.
Toodle-oo!