Australia's most visited natural event.

The little island of Phillip Island is located just south-east of Melbourne (pronounced Mel-bun by the locals).
Every nite at sunset little penguins, also known as fairy penguins come into shore. They are the smallest breed of penguins on Earth (or anywhere as far as I know). The birds have spent their whole day as far as 30 miles out in the ocean. At sunset they return to their shore (all at the same time) and walk up the beach (hence the term Penguin Parade) and go up to their nests to puke up the fish they have caught to their mate and chicks. How sweet. One day the male will do it, the other day the female. It is amazing to see as the sun sets these little birds gathering at the shore, then they all start walking in and climbing up steep hills. Occasionally they get swept back out in a wave, or slip on the hill, but it is all part of the excitement.
There are some floodlights (not extremely bright) and some stands set up so you can watch this happen. It is very dark, so good pictures are hard to get. You absolutely cannot take pictures with a flash as it will scare the birds (hey, the seagulls scare the birds, so just imagine what a flash does). However, there are still dolts who think they will get a good picture and use their flash. However the ranger and the crowd immediately jump on them. I used 1000 ASA color film, and 3200 ASA Black and White (but I shot it at 6400 ASA) to take my pictures. Even with this film and a tripod, it was very hard to take pictures.

				Little Penguin - Fairy Penguins in Australia (no picture available)
Lonely Planet Melbourne : City Guide by Mark Armstrong	Insight Guides Melbourne by Tony Perrottet (Editor)	Lonely Planet Guide to Australia	Fodor's '99 Australia (Fodor's Gold Guides)by Fodors (Editor), Fodor	Little Penguin - Fairy Penguins in Australia by Colin Stahel, Rosemary Gales	Australia : Trip Planner & Guide by Paul Strathern

What did you think?

I thought it was very interesting to see this. I would recommend this to everyone! This birds actually walk up very close (close enough to touch). However, they are wild animals and like any wild animal would bite anyone that touched them. In fact, the rangers told the people at the front that if the penguins decided to walk over them, they should just stay still to avoid being bitten.
One thing that I had heard was that the penguins came in all along the coast and had nests everywhere at one point. Then, in the interest of tourism (not the birds) many of the other areas on the coast were made inaccessible to encourage (i.e. force) the birds to come in at the area where all the stands were set up. If anyone knows anything about this, please email me. I think this is awful if this is true.