I had planned to spend the entirety of today on Phillip Island, which is an island located south of Melbourne and famously home to a large colony of Little Penguins. Wai Chung had told me there wouldn't be a ton to do on Phillip Island and he suggested I go to Wilson's Promontory National Park, which is located about an hour east of Phillip Island. I decided I would first drive to Wilson's Prom, go on a short hike or two, then head back to Phillip Island to see the Penguin Parade, a nightly event where a subset of the penguins return home after sunset after a couple of days spent hunting at sea.

It was a rather uneventful two hour drive to the entrance of Wilson's Prom. Once inside the park I was driving down the road and had to stop very suddenly, as there was an echidna crossing the road! It was the first of many wildlife encounters today!

I drove to the Telegraph Saddle viewing platform which has a parking lot and is the trailhead for the hike to the top of Mount Oberon, a point about 580m above sea level and with fantastic views. The hike itself wasn't very interesting because it follows a vehicle access road that is lined on both sides with trees. Once near the top there is a cell tower, and then you walk up some rocky stairs to the top of a collection of rocks with fantastic views of the ocean. After taking some photos I headed back down. The entire walk took only about 90 minutes which is a bit shorter than advertised.

I then drove towards the exit, but stopped at the Prom Wildlife Walk track, which is a short track in a flat area of the park near an old airstrip. There are said to be kangaroos, wallabies, and wombats in this area, but since it was the peak of the midday heat I wasn't expecting to see any (and I didn't). I did see a flock of emus pretty early on in the walk, and later on I was startled by an emu eating from the tree right on the side of the pathway. It was a little tricky to navigate around the path without startling the emus.

After a nice couple of walks I drove about 90 minutes west to Phillip Island. It was early enough in the day that I would be able to visit the Koala Conservatory before it closed (I had prebooked tickets to all the Phillip Island attractions, including the Koala Conservatory and the Penguin Parade, months in advance, so I figured I might as well go even for a brief visit). There were two small boardwalk sections that each had four koalas that were napping in the trees. It was very peaceful just walking around and seeing the koalas sleeping.

I then drove to the far west end of Phillip Island to the Nobbies, home to the Antarctic Centre, which I had also prebooked a ticket for. There was a small exhibit talking about the scope of Antarctic research, but it only required a few minutes to walk through.

I then drove back towards the penguin parade visitors centre. Rather than taking the main road, I took the scenic dirt road along the coast. There were lots of animals along both sides of the road: lots of Cape Beren geese and swamp wallabies, and I even saw another echidna!

I parked at the visitors center and walked down the boardwalk to some concrete bleachers that were built right in front of the ocean. As the sun was setting a park ranger informed us of how things would work: once the sun sets, everyone needs to put their phones away, because the blue light and the flashes can really mess with their eyesight. They don't know how many penguins will come or where they will go because it is entirely a natural process. I was sat in what I thought was a pretty good spot, but it turned out that hundreds of penguins all came to the shore a couple hundred meters further west of me, right near the people who had paid extra for the VIP seats. In the plebian area there were only a couple of dozen penguins. But it was still really cool to see them come to the shore and wait around until they formed little groups, then nervously run across the beach past the bleachers, and head up in search of their burrows.

After about an hour of watching the penguins I assumed there wouldn't be many more coming, so I headed back down the boardwalk towards the visitors center. Along the way all the penguins have come out of their burrows and start socializing, and you can see them from up close, which is super cute.

At this point it was late and nothing was left open on the island, but I hadn't eaten lunch or dinner and was very hungry. I was staying in a hostel on the island, so I had to drive about twenty minutes each way to go to the nearest open restaurant, which was a KFC. I got there a few minutes before closing but they still served me. I ate quickly in the car before heading back and going right to sleep.