‘Little Penguins’ – The hottest gig in town!
The hottest ticket in Victoria, Australia is to view the ‘Little Penguins’ on Phillip Island, a small island, 140kms south of Melbourne.
On the first live screening of these little penguins coming to shore at sunset, 771,000 people were online to check them out.
Tune in on Facebook here or YouTube here at 6pm AEST (SA 5.30pm, London 9.00am DST, Washington DC 4.00am DST ) Please note this is a free event – beware of fake links asking you to subscribe or pay to watch.
Little penguins, (seabirds that don’t fly) (Eudyptula minor) are the smallest of all penguin species. They stand approximately 33cm tall and weigh around one kilogram.
And why do Penguins waddle? The Penguin Foundation of Phillip Island explains, Waddling is the most efficient form of movement for penguins. Little legs and big feet make movement awkward on land but waddling helps by raising a penguin's centre of mass, allowing the penguin to swing its body forward and gain momentum.
In Australia we have turned to the Little Penguin for nearly 100 years to encourage tourism.
The picture below represents the colourful graphic style of poster art produced in the 1930s when state and federal government agencies undertook an aggressive campaign of promotion - with the beach, environment and wildlife featuring as major themes. The poster was commissioned by the Victorian Railways to promote Phillip Island as a desirable and complete tourist destination. Picture and text credit Australian National Maritime Museum c. 1930
Australia Post has also celebrated the Little Penguin
Our avid subscriber Snowy would be interested to know that in 2015, a popular movie was produced by Roadshow about "Oddball" the Maremma dog who was well versed in protecting chickens but was trained to protect penguins when they reached critically low numbers due to fox attacks on Middle Island off the coast of Victoria.
Note from Anne
Even though I grew up hundreds of kilometres from the home habitat of the Little Penguins on Phillip Island off the coast of Victoria, annually my father would drive us to watch these tiny creatures return from their fishing trips and waddle up over the sand dunes to their nests to feed their young.
The Little Penguins usually bring hundreds of thousands tourists each year to Victoria. Because of the coronavirus the viewing program has had to be cancelled for the foreseeable future. Please consider supporting this program especially by planning to book a weekend at Phillip Island once the restrictions are lifted.