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Oi, I told you I wasn't posing for photos!

A Happy New Year to one and all! Since I last blogged, Christmas and New Year have been and gone, but we’re still in Melbourne. Although now we are out of the hostel and house and pet sitting for a family in the suburbs.

We have managed to get out of town a couple of times, including a trip to Phillip Island, which is what this blog’s about. You can read a far better account of this on Kieron’s blog, so here are some pictures and mildly amusing captions!

Our first stop on our trip was a winery, but the less said about that the better (think fragrant aromas of beetroot and don’t get me started on the Riesling!). A more fulfilling sojourn on our way to the Island was the Maru Wildlife Park, where we got to see our first koala and a wombat called Wilma!

The sanctuary allows you to feed some of the animals and sells tubs of feed for a dollar. The kangaroos and wallabies were very friendly and would eat out of your hand. There were also these emus, who apparently bite, which makes feeding them a hazardous business.

"You've killed him! I told them he had a seed allergy!"

We found the easiest way of feeding them was putting a bit of feed on the gate so they could eat off it. However, as you can see from the picture above, it’s a bit of a stretch for some!

My entry to "Vertical Hair Cut of the Year". Previous winners include Marge Simpson, Gavin Henson and Chris Waddle.

On Phillip Island, we went for a very windy walk along the beach. It was reminiscent of stretches of the Northumberland coast, particularly the bit between Seahouses and Holy Island.

Australia's answer to the Giant's Causeway - apparently...

But Phllip Island is not all beach and we got to see The Nobbies, a rock formation at the Island’s tip.  It was extremely windy there and we didn’t spend too long out of the tour bus.

The Island is most famous for its Little Penguins and we saw a couple of these at the Nobbies. However, our final destination before returning to Melbourne was the “Penguin Parade”, where we saw many more Little Penguins.

At sunset thousands of tourists enjoy the spectacle of the penguins returning to their nests. It can be quite entertaining because it often takes several attempts for each group to come ashore, first one gets cold feet, then the whole group (a dozen or so penguins) retreats back into the sea.

Now it's your turn - leave a comment with a caption!

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the Penguin Parade because photography is not allowed (and rightly so!). So you’ll have to content yourselves with a picture of Kieron feeding a kangaroo.

So that’s all our animal photos for one day. Now I’ll get back to looking after the canary, cockatiel, rabbits and fish that we are charged with for the next three weeks!