Phillip Island

We are now visiting Phillip Island for the third time! We came in 2015 with two other families and made great memories together. Then when our oldest daughter came for a visit, we brought her to see it all, too. Now that Henry is older it is time for him to enjoy it. This is the last of our excursions around the Melbourne area. 

By this time we'd figured out Henry isn't much into beautiful scenery. He likes beaches, fish'n'chips, interesting animals and rocks to climb on. Phillip Island has it all. 

 

One of the first places we went to on Phillip Island was Shelly Beach! There are actually a lot of beaches dotting Australia that are named Shelley Beach, but this one is actually spelled like my name. I expected it to be covered in shells, but Seven Mile Beach in Tasmania actually had more. (And there was a sunbather on the beach that could have used a couple of those large shells to cover her topless sunbathing!) This beach is so named because the sand is still pretty chunky and you can spot the pieces of shells that are still in process of breaking down to become finer sand. I gathered a handful for my young nieces. I thought maybe a handful of Aunt Shelly sand would be something to meditatively stare at while they look for different colors and pieces of shells. I could stare at it for hours. There is even some stiff sea plants in it. Or maybe they are animals. The beach is also marked with black volcanic rock. It was hot and felt good to walk on the rocks and let the waves splash up on my feet. Henry gained a bit more confidence walking on them and trusting that the waves would not overcome him. 

 

The sand is chunky enough to actually squeak a bit, so it saved us a 3 hour drive to see Squeaky Beach further to the south. We went there 7 years ago but it was cold and rainy so we just ran in and out. 

The airbnb is so perfect and clean and charming. there is a huge palm tree just outside the door covering the entry with a relaxing canopy that doubles for a bit of privacy. It's so clean I don't want to mess anything up. Kookaburras fill the tree next door and make that awesome laughing sound. (You can hear them at 3:05 in the video at the end of this post.) And it's close to Red Rock Beach. Giant red boulders just pop up at the end of it for what seems like no reason whatsoever. But they are the perfect spot to watch the red sun set over the water. Henry had a great time climbing them, and I thought it was crazy that in just a 24 hour period, he'd climbed three different kinds of rock--the speckled huge rock pillars on Mt. Wellington in Tasmania, the black rocks of Shelly Beach, and now Red Rock Beach. 

 

 

 

 

We were trying to decide what to do with our one full day here. Turns out we had less to choose from than we thought. I didn't know I needed to book the Grand Prix Go Karts in advance, so that was a big disappointment. And the Penguin Parade was sold out (I didn't want to do that anyway), so we went to the Koala Reserve before the afternoon rain was supposed to arrive. 

 

It turns out koalas and humans are not all that different.

Along the way there, I saw a sign for Phillip Island Wildlife Park and was curious. I looked it up online while we drove and decided I'd rather go there, but felt like getting the boys back in the car and skipping the koala reserve was too annoying of a request. We saw four koalas, one wallaby, and some signs in the visitor center. Then I convinced them to go to the wildlife park too. It was amazing. Really. Henry forgot all about the go kart disappointment and can't stop talking about it. 

 

He got to feed kangaroos. A lot. We spent an hour feeding them. They hopped right up to him. Big ones, little ones, grey ones, and red ones. (see video at the end of this post!) And emus. Emus are assertive. They grabbed the bag of food right out of his hand. For the rest of his life, he'll hate emus. But he made life long friends with the kangaroos. There were also lizards, Tasmanian Devils, kookaburras, parakeet, buzzards, and wallabies. And koalas. He so excited to narrate an Australian animals video to share with his schoolmates in Utah (below). 

We headed to the small city centre to get him some lunch. He's not interested in fancy cuisine—or sandwiches—so when we need something warm for his belly, we resort to fish'n'chips. Mostly just the chips. I had to walk the Main Street a bit to find one. It was a 20 minute wait but they came out looking charming wrapped in newsprint. And they tasted perfect with the chicken salt. 

 

We wore Henry out with the two animal parks. His newfound maturity and resilience told him it was time to rest and stay at the Airbnb while Allen and I went to see Pyramid Rock. 

 

It was more wind than I wanted. You have to walk a long way out to the point where you can see a large rock formation off the coast that looks like...a pyramid, but not like the ones in Egypt, or geometry class. It's just pointy. Ish. There is now a boardwalk built to keep the humans from wandering all over and damaging the plant life—or falling off a cliff—but I couldn't help but wonder about the first humans in the area dthat happened on upon it. I wondered if the teenage kids from the cattle farming family nearby would walk out to the point to have their alone time and dream of their future--or life without parents. I personally only wanted about 10 minutes of it because the wind was so fierce, but if I were an angsty teen that wind would be the perfect manifestation of my big feelings. 

We got back and stopped at the grocery store to get more pasta sauce for the spaghetti we had left over. I put Allen and Henry in charge of picking that pasta and they chose "tubular spaghetti." It's so thick and chunky. Like fat yarn. It has a mind of it's own and doesn't like to stay wound on your fork. You can't really scoop it either because it doesn't bend over the edge of the fork. It's comical to eat it. Last time for that pasta. 

I cut some sweet potatoes in long wedges and put them on the grill while I worked on the animals video for Henry. They were so perfectly baked and caramelized in no time. I sliced a lebanese cucumber to finish off dinner and was happy. 

The next day we went to go watch the Pelican feeding at San Remo on our way off the island. 

This was a very cool sculpture that has a catch for throwing in your plastic bottle lids. It is meant to call attention to the hazards of plastic waste in the oceans. Pelicans swallow their food whole so sometimes they get a bag of plastic and think it's a fish. Then it just stays in their stomach undigested. You can imagine this is devastating for a bird that needs to use its stomach to nourish itself. 

 

Henry had just seen Maverick, so he thought this was cool. 

There was another beach called "Shelley Beach" not far from there so I wanted to check it out. It was a little ambiguous on the GPS so I started from a remote parking area at the end of a gravel road. Hmmm. But I was willing to head down this path to see where it would lead. 

 

It turns out it wasn't the right spot. We finally found it here. It had very interesting volcanic rock formations. Henry had a great time climbing them. 

And you can see why it is called Shelley Beach! These were just in piles all over. I could grab handfuls. And I did!

We've seen so many animals, Henry made a video to show them all: