Melbourne 6d5n Road Trip : Greeting Animals at Maru Koala Park and Philip Island

Once three of us had touched down at Melbourne Airport,

we headed to Avis Car Rental Shop which located outside of the airport for collecting the car

We had pre booked the car via online before we came here

6 days of car rental cost RM 600 excluding toll fees.

After getting our car, we headed to the destination that my friend had schedule out.

Maru Koala and Animal Park

The park is located at outskirt of Melbourne City, Grantville

It takes 2 hours drive to reach the park.

It is recommend to come in earlier morning rather than noon as those tour buses and tour groups came at noon time and create a crowded ambiance.  

We reached at the park around 11am and it was not crowded at all yet.

The admission fees of the park is AUD 20.

It was quite excited to experience a closer distance with the kangaroos 

especially this was my first time meet them in reality by face to face, lol

They are kinda cool and lazy of course, 

they don’t bother humans and if you have food on your hand, 

they definitely will come to you for sure. Well, animals, lol.

The kangaroo are hoping freely at the big field with one another

The another species of goat we called as “Cao Ni Ma”

is living peacefully with the kangaroo too.

We are also allowed to enter their area and feed them with food selling at the counter.

We are able allow to touch and take picture with them too. 

Honestly, I am quite excited when I was going to touch its forehead,

I just afraid it will hop away or bump into me if I touched it.

Nevertheless, it never refuse to let me touch. 

It seems like its hobby is eat and eat, just like my house pet Bobby. LOL

I cant stop myself to get close to them

just because they are soooooo cute.

 They are quite tall too when they stand straight.

It was asking for food from the little boy.

I forgot the name of this little creature

but it looks like kind of rats body mix with pig face

It looks cute but it will bite human,

that's why we cant near to it and it is not opened for public, unlike kangaroo. 

The Koala Bear is quite adorable too

but I m quite surprised that they were more lazier in reality.

There will be a photo session at certain time daily for the public to take picture with it.

The staff brought a koala come in to the photo taking area

and that koala refused to work and the staff had to change another koala for photo taking.

The another koala repeated the same behavior, 

it keep finding the door to get out,

the staff had no choice and changed another koala again XD

Finally, that's the koala that willing to take picture today

but it seems focus on eating the leaves more.

I cant express its cuteness but the way it tear the leaf was so adorable!

It just totally same like Panda Bear.

We had our lunch inside the park,

the price of the food is almost same as those restaurants in the city,

It is normal to me by now, but the first day landed in Melbourne and looking at such price might need a longer time to make decision whether to eat or not as I keep convert the price to Malaysia Ringgit.

After lunch, we continued to drive about 20 mins distance to reach the first home stay we had in Melbourne,  the home stay is super near to the spot attraction of penguin parade at Phillip Island.

For more info, you can check back the home stay detail via my itinerary post
http://osakajoan.blogspot.com/2018/06/melbourne-6d5n-road-trip-april.html

The house is super clean, basically I cant find any dust in this house

and the host is super duper friendly that they can share a lot of stories about Melbourne to 3 of us. 

They do provide heater in the bed, the existence of heater did make me sleep easily as the whether at Phillip Island is quite cold compare to Melbourne City

The penguin parade starts at evening everyday

We thought we reached quite early but somehow we were late in fact when we saw majority of  "good seats" have been took place. 

The attraction of this penguin parade is a natural activity that taken by a group of small size penguins coming up to the shore from the sea and go back to their shelter group by group. 

Since the location is by the beach, 

My face was almost freeze by the low temperature and the strong wind at here. 

I believe others are suffering the same like me,

it was so cold and you cant leave your seat or else it might taken by others.

All you can do is sit and wait and suffered the cold. 

The Penguin Parade Entrance fee cost RM160 per person, 

I didn't take any photo as they don't allow tourist to take picture on the penguins

There will be few supervisors watching us and they will warned you if you take picture on them

Honestly, I don't think penguin parade is a value for money ticket,

You just watch the penguins walked back to their shelter and you don't even see where their shelter is.

You just can see the penguins walking pass by the tourist spot. That's all. =.=

We had our light dinner after the parade ended, around 9pm

We bought mushroom can and breads from the supermarket at the evening

while the host provide us a cube of butter.

taaaadaaaaaa

Nice yet warm dinner to me for the first day in Melbourne before I go to bed. 

Stay tuned at my blog for the following days in Melbourne.

I believe more photos will be uploaded.