Melbourne and Penguins

We spent yesterday morning touring the CBD of Melbourne. Another lovely clean, modern city with active sports and vibrant arts and culture - there are stadiums, galleries and theatres everywhere.

In the afternoon and evening, we took a bus tour out to Phillip Island just off the southern most coast of Australia's mainland. The scenery was breathtaking! We also saw lots of animals in their natural environment.

The highlight of the tour was watching the penguin parade at dusk. Every evening thousands of little penguins return from a day of eating as much seafood as possible in the rough seas. As darkness falls, they struggle out of the sea and over the dunes in their exhaustion to bring the food back to their offspring waiting in their burrows.

It is truly emotional to watch their heroic efforts and to listen to their calls to one another during this miraculous feat of nature.