Our tour excursion today - to French and Phillip Islands off the east coast of Melbourne's Mornington Peninsula - was not slated to kick off until about noon, and we now had a fair understanding of where we would meet the tour host in downtown Melbourne, having done a fairly comprehensive walking tour of its iconic arcades and lanes yesterday. As such, we had a fairly leisurely and un-rushed morning - comprising the usual breakfast at the hotel (tofu scramble on toast for me; vegan pancakes for Deborah), a train ride downtown, a phone call with my sister Kate (regarding my dad's health and recovery from a recent medical crisis), and an early lunch of vegan Lord of the Fries fast food - before meeting the excursion tour guide (Sam) and tour bus in front of the Regent Theatre (home to the Melbourne Ballet) on Collins Street.
The day's tour was an absolute marathon of driving, ferrying, and wildlife viewing - including close ups with koalas, wallabies, bees, echidnas, bandicoots, and penguins, among other iconic Australian species. The tour bus shuttled us southeast from Melbourne into the Mornington Peninsula and ultimately to the French Island ferry, which we took across the sea to the very remote (and Aussie horror movie iconic) French Island. Here we met another tour bus and tour guide (Scott) who drove us around the rustic island, stopping to view chlamydia free koalas and an echidna (by the side of the road). We made a lunch stop at a remote ranch on the island, catering to such tour groups with a light lunch (even accommodating our veganism, thankfully) and some wine. After lunch, Scott returned us to the ferry terminal, where we caught the ferry over to the town of Cowes on Phillip Island, and regrouped with our original tour guide, Sam. Deborah thoroughly enjoyed both of the boat rides.
We had about an hour to kill before Sam shuttled us to the place where we would see the march of the faerie penguins at sundown, by way of a scenic wildlife tour around the island, during which we saw - out the windows of the tour bus - numerous wallabies, an echidna, some geese, and even a few baby faery penguins peeping out of their underground burrows. We used that hour to get a quick vegan dinner at an Italian restaurant called Pino's, where they had a vegan pasta dish that I ordered. Deborah got a veganized pizza, some of which I helped her eat when she had had her fill.
The viewing of the faery penguins returning from their day of fishing at sea was quite an ordeal, some of it enjoyable. I don't even want to travelogue all of it here, but I had seen it once before, years ago with my family, even before I met Deborah, and the sundown march of the penguins is a sight to behold. However, the human element at the thing was discouraging and depressing - literally and ironically a zoo. There were way too many people. I get that they have to fund the nature center and viewing area with tourism dollars, and they must make thousands - if not millions - of dollars a day, given the vast congregation of humanity in attendance at our particular penguin viewing event.
Despite clear rules about no photography at the viewing of one of nature's coolest experiences, many people just couldn't resist the compulsion to capture it on their electronic devices. I'm going to say it here, and I'll say it whenever I can, smart phones and social/mainstream media are a curse on humanity and toxic to mind, body, and soul. This being a de facto truth, Asians are largely mindless, body-less, and soulless, because it was almost exclusively Asians violating the strictures on photographing the faery penguins. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt...perhaps there was a language barrier with the posted signs and park ranger verbal admonitions against photography. But even some of the individuals directly warned continued to try to cheat the system. Anyway, f**k those f**kers.
Deborah was thankful that I had advised her to dress warmly and bring an extra layer for the penguin viewing. Despite modest southern hemisphere summer temperatures in the 70s, the penguin viewing area on Phillip Island faces the rugged Bass Strait body of water between continental Australia and Tasmania. Depending on wind direction, Phillip Island can get some gusty chill winds blustering up from the cold Southern Ocean and Antarctica. Luckily, the winds on this particular evening of our penguin viewing were out of the west, and so we were protected by an outcropping of the island on our right from the full force of the oceanic winds. But they were pretty fierce and we got chilly during the event.
When Deborah had reached the maximum limit of her injustice phobia against the photo pirates attending the penguin viewing, we walked back toward the parking lot, alongside (on an elevated boardwalk) the "penguin highway," a stretch of dirt track most of the 800+ penguins used to hustle back to their dens and chicks (awaiting their regurgitated fish dinner). We saw many young penguin chicks running out to greet arriving adults, a behavior the rangers said most chicks do, despite being denied nourishing regurgitate by all adults SAVE their actual biological parents. I felt bad seeing most of these chicks get denied food (by way of squawks and pecks from annoyed non-biologically related adults), but I assured myself that the parents' of these chicks would soon arrive, safe and sound, from the sea.
We got back to the tour bus about 10 minutes before its departure back to Melbourne. The drive back to Melbourne from Phillip Island was the most torturous part of the day's excursion, because it was nearly two hours of driving late at night, with not much to see or do. We were dropped off by Sam, the tour bus driver, at the same place we were picked up, outside the Regent Theatre on Collins Street, at almost exactly midnight. I had deduced earlier, from Google Maps, that the last train back to our hotel would be departing at about 11 minutes after midnight, with no further services until morning. So, we had to hustle to get from the tour drop off to Flinders Street Station a few blocks away. We got a little bit turned around by the aforementioned lanes and arcades (and Google Maps biffing on me), but made it to the train station with a few minutes to spare. Additionally, the train we needed was delayed about 20 minutes, so we made it onboard our train comfortably, albeit exhausted.
Arriving back at the hotel around 1 AM, we decompressed for bed and slumbered. Hard.
Fin.
