Wallaby on the beach at 9 pm!

Today's post is largely from Vehd ....

"Australia is a land of marsupials. Even some of the cats are marsupials. We went to the Moonlit Sanctuary and did the Wallaby walk. I fed Wallaby's straight out of my hands. Later, we went to Phillip Island to see penguins. Hundreds of people sat down on stadium seats at the edge of the beach to see the penguins emerge from the ocean at dusk. As the crowd waited for the penguins, a Wallaby was taking away the show by going "boing, boing, boing!" Soon after, we saw small cute penguins, the Little Penguins coming out of the water fussily, not coming out very fast. Once out, the were all out over the boardwalks, under and over and inside. The chicks were waiting for them to come home and give them their food. The chicks were so downy and fluffy. We stayed out till 10 pm and got home only at midnight from seeing the penguins."

We were not allowed to take any pictures of the penguins. Penguins have 13 eyelids that are all completely open when they emerge from the ocean water. Exposed to flash photography, the penguins can throw up all the food they have collected all day and even die from exposure to the flash. Not having our cameras out made us all the more attentive to the absolute miracle of chicks and parents interacting with each other.