Our first few days in Australia were indeed a whirlwind. We left late on Sunday night and then (the joys of traveling over the dateline) we lost Monday altogether and landed on Tuesday morning. We were all groggy and disoriented, but we managed to have a full-ish day. We went out of the city to visit an Aboriginal Cultural Centre that ended up being largely a dud. But at least the kids got to see wallabies and emus up close.

Yesterday, after an early jet-lagged morning and a few work phone calls, we walked through the city exploring the laneways and city streets. On a whim, we visited the State Library Victoria. The architecture was luminescent – a graceful melding of old and new. And we stumbled upon an exhibit called World of the Book that included everything from a cuneiform tablet to a first edition of Newton’s Principia to copies of Alice in Wonderland and the Moomintrolls. I hadn’t realized the world-wide appeal of the Moomins – we’ve seen them everywhere from Hawaii to Kyoto to Melbourne. Who knew Scandinavian scamps would have such global appeal?

At the street entrance to the library, we found a 35th Anniversary edition of Possom Magic, a delightful Australian children’s classic picture book. If we’re extremely lucky, we’ll be able to see a play at the Sydney Opera House based on Possom Magic.

After a quick dim sum lunch, we rented a car and headed out of town to Philip Island, about two hours outside the city. Now, this demands a little bit of an explanation… When we were in Seattle a couple weeks ago, we visited a dreamy bookstore (I could have filled a suitcase with the beautiful books I wanted to bring back for homeschool inspiration, but alas there’s only so much that could fit in our luggage and our budget…). Amelia chose a book about different animals that she has been poring over, and a few days later she discovered that Australia has penguins. Which prompted us to try to figure out where Australia has penguins and prompted us to wonder if we figure out how to get ourselves there. Which led us to Melbourne and Philip Island. Once we started looking into Melbourne, we got really excited about visiting.

Philip Island is the home of the largest penguin colony in the the world and over 20% of the island is dedicated to a nature preserve with protected habitat for everything from penguins to koalas, fur seals and bandicoots (did you know those were real animals? I didn’t. I’m embarrassed to say that I thought they were crash-prone cart-driving figments of Nintendo’s imagination…). Every night at sunset rafts of penguins swim in from the ocean and cross a beach on Philip Island to commute to their burrows all over the island. They’ve built a visitor center and stands for people to sit near the beach and watch the evening penguin parade from ocean to shore.

They don’t allow any photography of the penguin parade – it’s too disruptive to their night vision. But I can’t get over how much fun it was to watch the penguins come in from the shore and scurry across the beach. Once they’re off the beach, you can watch from a boardwalk as the make their way back to their burrows and chatter to each other. We could just imagine them catching up on all the day’s news.

We were also enchanted with Philip Island itself. The island has nature trails, surfing, hiking, a small general aviation airport, wineries and a koala preserve. Some day I want to come back and just spend a week there, relaxing and enjoying everything the island has to offer.

Our time in Melbourne is unfortunately over now and we’re on a flight to Sydney. Before we decided to rearrange our trip for some penguins, we booked tickets for Possum Magic. We figured that we might just barely be able to make it from our flight to the Opera House in time for the performance. Unfortunately, our flight left Melbourne late, so the chances of making it are shrinking quickly. But if we miss it, we’ll regroup and that will be okay. More adventures to follow…