Category: Tourism
It's school holiday time and me and the boys just spent some time down at Phillip Island in Westernport Bay about two hours from Tram Town Central. We went to see the fairy penguins returning from their daily fishing adeventures. A less spectacular spectacle I could not imagine. It's about 40 years since I last saw it and my memory of it had definitely become falsified over the years. The 8-year-old forgot to take a jumper and I had to give up mine for him because concerned parents were commenting on how cold he was; teach him a lesson, I was thinking. I'm guessing we saw about 30 penguins altogether and at $30 for entry that makes $1 per beast and I'm here to tell you that they're only small buggers... I estimate that, for every ten or so steps you take on the island, signage reminds you that you are a guest invader on the territory of some flying animal (bats are amongst the list so I couldn't just say bird) and that you should avoid all normal human activity and totally suspend any regular commercial behaviour for 5 days following your incursion. If you have the slightest problem with green-ness, I would keep away from Phillip Island, but... we did a guided tour of the Phillip Island Grand Prix circuit and saw a Cooper-Climax that Jack Brabham drove to victory in the 1960 world drivers' championship (amongst lots of other great stuff). We didn't make it to the dairy museum or the Viet-vets museum in San Remo, or for that matter the annelidously shaped worm museum just up the road on the South Gippsland Highway, we'll save them for the next time I am brave enough to venture into such green territory.
STOP PRESS: Semi scores in the competition for first Tram Town use of a word with all 5 (6) vowels in alphabetical order.
HUMOUR: A man was charged with slaughtering and cooking an Australian native bear a koala and by some means managed to get off. The judge however was interested enough to pull him aside and, whispering, ask what it tasted like. He confidently replied: "Oh much like platypus or fairy penguin". [thanks Paddy] [I really should have told that joke to some of those self-satisfied rangers at the penguin parade] |
