Sights from Australia: Melbourne
Saturday, December 31, 2011, at 10:16AM
By Eric Richardson
After three days in Sydney, Kathy and I took a short flight down the coast to Melbourne. We spent a week there, visiting Kathy's sister Laura and letting her introduce us to the city.
While I've chosen 19 photos to represent our time there, one of the highlights of the trip was one where cameras were not allowed. On Tuesday we visited the Penguin Parade in Phillip Island Nature Park, a nightly ritual in which the area's last surviving colony of Little Penguins returns from a day of feeding in the ocean and makes its way up the beach to burrows that can be up to two kilometers away.
The Little Penguins are only about a foot tall. Apparently they used to be called "Fairy Penguins" until the government decided that was insensitive. Visitors wait on viewing bleachers and boardwalks to see the little creatures waddle past after sunset.
Thursday we flew home—the time change giving us a day that lasted 43 hours—and now we have the long weekend to get back into the swing of things before school starts back up for Kathy on Tuesday.