This was an idyllic day of adventure. Somewhere, months (or years) and thousands of miles ago, I read about a penguin colony you can visit about an hour south of Perth. You can even get there with moderate ease via public transit, although we didn't.
We left around 10:45 and had an easy, 50-minute drive to tiny Shoalshead, just past the slightly-larger beach community of Rockingham. The Googles helped me find a straight-forward looking seafood "take away" joint a few blocks from our true destination and we found parking quickly. As soon as we sat down, though, Elise pointed out that the menu didn't match he name I had mentioned. The bad news is that my fish-n-chips joint was closed (maybe for the holidays, as seems to be common, or maybe for longer). The good news is that Elise got to have brunch in a restaurant, which is one of her favorites.
At 1:00 we were on an adorable little ferry for the five-minute ride across to the aptly-named Penguin Island with wrist-bands for the 2:30 penguin feeding demonstration and the 3:00 dolphin cruise. First, though, we had an hour on a soft beach with beautiful swimming. Lily and Henry received a waterproof camera for Christmas (a replacement for one that had died earlier in the trip) and this was a great time to test it out.
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| Troublemakers |
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| Cate and her beloved snorkel |
The island is home to nearly a thousand "Little Blue" or "Fairy" penguins but they are all out fishing from sun up to sun down so the only ones we saw in the wild were in their molting process and hiding assiduously under the boardwalks.
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| Kevin the penguin and his "wife" Jane the researcher |
At the 2:30 feeding in the Discovery Centre, however, we learned about the dozen or so birds that are being nursed temporarily or permanently. Our docent/guide/instructor, Jane, told us about one of the birds, Kevin, whom she had nursed from infancy and who had imprinted upon her. Now that he's four, he's apparently decided that she has changed from parent to spouse. Creepy but adorable.
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| Little Blue (or Fairy) Penguins at the Penguin Island Discovery Centre |
The dolphin cruise is like so many of its kind, offering a free return trip if nothing is spotted. That wouldn't be our problem, however. Within two minutes of leaving the dock we spotted a dolphin. Even better, the dolphin was feeding by following a gigantic Manta Ray, which itself was feeding along the bottom of the shallow water. For thirty minutes we traveled less than a few hundred yards, watching this dolphin and ray swim near our boat.
The story our guide will probably tell her friends is that every time she would say, "oh, he's out there at about two o'clock" Ali would quickly look at the watch she got in her stocking and declare, "No! It's 3:37!"
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| Our dolphin buddy, just off the bow of our 30-person boat |
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| Maybe hard to see in a picture on your screen, that dark shape is the ray |
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| The kids were glued to the railing the entire time |
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| Cate seemed ready to jump in. |
Then a sea lion swam by and we followed him for a while, eventually watching him clamber up on a beach to join a colony of peers. We got to see one of those classic altercations where the Big Dude demanded his spot on the sand back from an overly courages younger fellow.
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