I'M 8 HOURS AHEAD

Phillip Island is more of a peninsula than an island, to start with. With a  group of Mexican and Colombian friends we rented cars, and they didn’t have a minivan where the seven of us could fit (because, of course, we decided to go on a road trip the day before) so we had to take two cars.

Maru Park

After an hour or so on the road I was astonished when I realised no one would speed over the 100km/h. The Maru Koala & Animal Park was a little zoo with wallabies, kangaroos, rabbits, lamas, wombats and a horse. Obviously, the first think I did was go to pet the horse. Most of the zoo’s I knew of in Australia made you pay an extra 25 bucks to feed animals. In Maru Park we had included with the entrance fee the option to feed kangaroos and wallabies. We had to pay for the food.

Phillip Island

After visiting Maru Park we kept driving up to the “end” of the peninsula. We walked every beach and stoped at every lookout. It was lunch time by the time we got there, so we had fish and chips in the restaurant.

After walking around the “end” of the peninsula, we drove back to a small lake, where we saw 4 wallabies in the wild. I guess Australians are used to see them, but for us foreigners was a highlight.

When the sun was setting we sat down with a couple hundreds of people to watch the little penguins. They get out of the water and walk about 300 hundred meters to sleep in little wood houses. There are the smallest penguins of the world (about 15cm tall). It is completely dark when the penguins are walking. It is absolutely forbidden to take pictures with or without the flash on.