Road Trip To Phillip Island Sunday 19th – Tuesday 21st January 2014

On Sunday me and dad were up early to go and collect our hire car from the airport for our road trip to Phillip Island! Dad was supposed to go and get the car on his own but seen as he seems to get lost in Essex, mum didn’t trust him to go alone because we’d never see him again!

We didn’t end up getting to Phillip Island until around 3 and we didn’t have much planned for the afternoon but had booked, as recommended and a highlight of Phillip Island, to go to the Penguin Parade in the evening. We sat on the steps infront of the beach, where as we hadn’t expected, sitting in shorts, t-shirt and cardi, unlike everyone else who was wrapped up in coats and jumpers, it was a little cold and breezy – no one told us!!! It was so cute though because as dusk came around 9.15 pm, we started to see little groups of penguins appear at the water’s edge and slowly gather to make their long trek across the beach to the their burrows. We saw quite a few penguins and we saw several groups waddling their way across the beach, they were all so small and really funny to watch. After about 20 minutes of watching the penguins emerge from the water, we started to slowly walk up to the main building where we saw the penguins meeting up with their little babies and heading to their burrows. Mum found one penguin (I named him Brian) especially amusing because it seemed as though he was racing all the other penguins up to his burrow but it also looked like he was drunk (bit like Mum after Stapes and Shillo have fed her one too many).

Yesterday, we decided to spend the day at the beach, especially as I wanted to surf. Me and dad hired a surf board for the day and we had great fun surfing at Smith’s beach where the waves were pretty big. We both didn’t start off too well and took a few tumbles and dives but we both eventually started to get the hang of it a bit more getting a few stands. Mum even had a little go body boarding on the board which I think she actually found quite fun heading all the way into the beach. After me and dad spent a few hours surfing we were pretty tired, and a bit cold and we headed back to our apartment and got fish and chips and drunk wine!

This morning as we were driving off the island there was time for one last stop at Panny’s Chocolate Factory. We went in and had a tour of the chocolate factory (a chocolate ticket allowed us in) and we got the opportunity to play games to get free samples. The chocolate was pretty good – but then isn’t all chocolate?! After we went into their café and had a very nice iced chocolate before it was time to hit the road for the 2 hour drive to the hot springs. Now I made a little error because when we turned up to the hot springs I didn’t even think to book and it was at full capacity so we couldn’t go in. I felt a bit bad because I know mum was really looking forward to it. It also meant we had to find a couple of hours to kill before heading back to Melbourne to return the car. We ended up finding a beach so we sat there for 2 hours before taking, at first a scenic route along the coast back to Melbourne, where Darc was waiting at the airport to pick us up. We spent the evening at his house, where he cooked us a great carbonara and we had a drink or two.

For pictures from Phillip Island of us surfing and from the chocolate factory Click Here - Phillip Island