Great Ocean Road and Phillip Island Trip

Not even a week after I came back from Sydney, I took off to the next awesome Aussie place :)

Packed with excitement and enthusiasm for the upcoming, famous Phillip Island Penguin Parade, I was on my way, once again. Packing now feels like a routine that I am getting used to doing every week. And I like it. I like traveling.

Our trip began with picking up some students from RMIT, which stands for Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (fancy, right?) :) So our group was consisted from about 20 students from both Deakin University and RMIT. Our trip leaders were amazing! Funny, witty, positive and simply great. It was better than what I expected. One of our trip leaders said that we will become like a family by the end of that trip and although I didn’t believe that at first, it happened :) You can’t help it when you not only go sightseeing with those people, but cook, eat, drink, sleep and live together for some time.

Our first day was spent on the Great Ocean Road which (surprisingly?) goes along the ocean :) Listening to fun music while on the way (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_TB6onHVE), we visited beautiful landscapes such as the 12 Apostoles,

and the breathtaking scenery of the Ship Wreck Coast.

Since it was really windy (which you probably don’t feel through my pictures, but I definitely did), we skipped the planned beach swim, and headed to our backpacker dorm, where we all, jointly prepared our dinner. It was one of the yummiest meals I’ve had because of our awesome team work.

The next day was the more eventful and exciting one, since koalas, kangaroos and penguins were on the list. That was when I got really excited. I have seen and taken pictures with them before (in the Melbourne Zoo), but this was a completely different experience. (funny koala song – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB2y52jfRdc). Something amazing about this trip was that I saw these animals in the wild. I saw koalas in an eucalyptus forest; and wallabies (sort of little kangaroos) and little penguins (the smallest ones on earth) on Phillip Island.

My real encounter with a koala was in an animal park. It was a fluffy, little ball of cuteness. It is not so innocent though. It should always have something to eat in front of it, otherwise it would begin picking my hair and look for leaves there.

And if I try to steal its food, it looks at me funnily.

So I just decided to take a normal picture with the fluffiness and move on to the roo world.

And there they were, in their kangarooland, jumping around freely, wanting to be fed. And there I was coming with the food.

I never thought kangaroos are so friendly. I imagined them bigger, wilder and scarier. But instead, they are yet another sort of adorable, jumping fluffiness. Here is a video which shows how they go around their day :)

Kangaroo Land

And as we all learned from the koala song, koalas and kangaroos are called marsupials. This basically means that they have a pouch where the baby continues to develop. I saw one mom with her bebe in the pouch and it was the sweetest thing. When the baby got tired from presenting itself, it just hid itself in mama’s pouch and disappeared completely from the world.

Mama Kangaroo with Bebe Roo

This was my most favorite part of the whole trip. I enjoyed the kangaroos the most since they are the most Australian thing we have all heard about. And I loved the fact that they are so approachable and friendly.

After dinner that night, we headed to the Penguin Parade. This is where the smallest penguins in the world have a daily routine of coming out of the ocean, after all day of fishing, and head back to their homes. I have seen penguins before, but this was incredible. This was the first time I was able to observe them in the wild, in their natural state of being. It was the first time I heard the noises they make when they are about to meet their mates. And I even followed one which seemed extremely worried that it won’t be able to find its mate. Eventually it did. This is how they sound:

Penguin Talk

So cute, right?? We were not allowed to take pictures since it was too dark and the flash would scare the penguins so the only picture with a penguin I have is this one.