A boardwalk covered in tourists, a seabird 'garden' covered in nesting Silver Gulls and Little Penguin burrows, spectacular views of a rugged shoreline and several islands, an information centre complete with cafe, an important breeding colony of seals, pounding waves - this is The Nobbies on Phillip Island east of Melbourne.
I've never seen a breeding colony of Silver Gulls - they're one of our most common birds but they breed on offshore islands. And the headland near The Nobbies since a successful revegetation project. The revegetation area is now called a 'breeding bird garden' and has it's own EVC catagory - pigface, poa, Bower Spinach and a senecio make up the flora community.
Little Penguins are also nesting on the cliff and we saw several young ones in their burrows, unnoticed by the tourists. (OK, we were tourists too, but of a superior quality.) We also saw several busloads of tourists fleetingly visiting several areas on the island before going to the Penguin Parade. And we managed to avoid the big crowds attending the Phillip Island round of the V8 Supercar series. (No I'm not a petrol-head, the last sentence is a direct dictation from my brother-in-law.)
No comments:
Post a Comment