We started our morning with a walk on the Rye beach, just two blocks from the cottage. It’s a very dog friendly beach.

The first stop of the day was Arthur’s Seat, the highest point on the peninsula. We walked the gardens and the trails and enjoyed the view.

From Arthur’s Seat we drove to the Crittenden Winery. We tasted two whites, a rosé, and three reds. It surprised us that we liked the Pinot Gris and the rosé the best. The Pinot Noirs we’ve tasted so far have been quite different from the Oregon Pinots that we’re used to. The winemaker’s dog joined us.

Crittendenwines.com.au

After our Crittenden wine tasting we headed to Pt. Leo Estate, once the private estate of one of the richest Australians and now one of the best known vineyards in the area. They have several lunch options including a very high end “Laura Experience”, which we did not do. (My sister said she’d been having the Laura Experience for years and found them over-rated!) We had a wonderful lunch accompanied by a Pt. Leo Estate Pinot. The food was very good and this Pinot Noir was more to our liking.

Pt. Leo Estate is also known for it’s sculpture garden. They charge a fee to stroll the grounds, but it was included with our lunch. Very little of the art suited my tastes. There were one or two we found ok.

After our wine tasting and lunch we had a short rest before our evening activity. My sister has for years heard of the Fairy Penguin Parade and requested we do this, especially since we’d missed them earlier. It was about a two hour drive.

The Penguin Parade is a natural occurrence every night. We saw penguin tracks in the sand at Twelve Apostles, but Phillip Island is home to a colony of over 40,000 penguins, the largest Little Penguin colony in the world. They were formerly called Fairy Penguins. The Phillip Island Nature Parks have a research and visitors center at the site.

Penguins.org.au

The Penguin Parade tickets were for 8 PM. We arrived early and walked through their extensive visitors center and gift shops. We bought the Penguins Plus tickets which gave us a very close view. The previous night 2,284 penguins arrived, starting at 8:35 PM.

The park rangers gave a talk and advised of the strict no photography policy after sunset. The penguins come ashore in “rafts” (large groups) for safety, then walk up the beach to find their burrows. They are the smallest Penguin in the world, with blue feathers on top and white on the bottom.

It is all outside, and even though it is the end of summer, it was breezy and cool. We dressed in our warmest clothes, including beanies.

The crowd was thrilled when the little penguins started arriving. Some had been out in the water a while and were so fat they could hardly walk up the beach. At first just few came in, and then hundreds crowded together and started the trek up the paths, right in front of the wooden bleachers. They were adorable. They are even smaller than you think they’ll be and are very cute as they make their way waddling up the sand and along the paths. They walk beside the boardwalk, and you can follow them. The special lights used to allow visitors to see them but not to disturb the penguins are turned off about 50 minutes after the first arrival. The drive, the cost, the cold and the crowds were all worth it.