Another Quigley Down Under

Its been far too long since I last updated you all with my latest and greatest adventures down under.  My deepest apologize.  I've been busy with work and then passed through an excruciatingly difficult period without internet.  Those were dark days, but it is behind us now and I am fully connected once again. So, its time to bring you up to date on things.

A couple of weeks ago, I took on the full Australian animal experience.  We headed about an hour south of the city of Melbourne to a little place called Phillip Island.  This island is home to a chocolate factory, various animal reserves, and the world's smallest penguin.  My conclusion at the end of the day? Australia is home to the world's cutest animals.

We one of the animal reserves where many of the animals are free roaming.  They are VERY used to the human presence and know that where there are humans there is food.  Every one who enters gets a bag of pellets that can be fed to any of the grass eating animals.  Literally from the moment we walked in the gates, we had eyes on us.  They weren't human eyes.  They were the adorable dark eyes of a very astute wallaby.

After a lot of fuss over the small marsupial, I remembered that we still had a lot to see.  I will spare you the list of animals that we saw.  But check out the pictures below and you'll be able to see for yourself the up close experience I had with some of Australia's native animals. 

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to show my experience with the penguins.  They are sensitive to the flash and so all forms of photography are banned.  I know that you can take pictures without a flash but the little guys only come out at night time.  Its really cool actually.  They all swim ashore just after sunset to avoid predators.  They come out of the water, waddle across the beach and up the hills to their burrows.  Once they get to the burrow's opening they kind of just stand there and "sing".  They make quite the noise.  I had no idea.  If you want more information check out www.penguins.org.au

Anyway, I could go on about petting kangaroos, feeding cassowaries, watching the dingos, but a picture is worth a thousand words so, here are a few thousand words. (Oh and a video too!)