Wednesday was my birthday and we had a really lovely day.

Before breakfast Anna was very keen for me to open my presents, whilst I was still feeling rather sleepy. She'd got me a number of small things including extremely delicious passion fruit curd, which is ideal on toast. A couple of days previous we'd been going around the shops in Perth city centre and after lunch Anna had wanted some time to get birthday things. It tuned out she went back to all the shops we'd been in and got things that I'd said were nice!
Pam got me a book on Australian birds and Mum had sent a package which contained a huge beach ball, 'I spy at the airport' and a book on NZ wildlife. They were all lovely presents.

We put together a lunch of cold pizza and headed south to Penguin Island, home to penguins. It took about 1hr to get there and then we had a short wait for the ferry. Once we landed we walked to the far side of the island (which sounds much further than it actually is, the island is quite small) and had a snorkel. The water was quite rough so we didn't stay for long but we could see some interesting fish. We the headed to the visitor centre for a penguin feeding.
The island is home to about 1000 wild penguins but they are nocturnal and also spend a lot of time out at sea, so there was not much chance of seeing one. However they had 10 that had been rescued and were then unable to return to the wild living in a pool that we could see. Little penguins are so cute; they are only about 30cm tall and have dark blue backs and pearlescent white tummies.

After watching them being fed we had our lunch, surrounded by buff-banded rails and king skinks in the undergrowth. We walked to the north look out to see pelicans. They are so big but such impressive flyers and they looked very content on the water. Anna says that she'd like to come back as a pelican if she had the choice. I did some more snorkelling on the more sheltered side of the island while Anna basked and then we watched the penguins being fed their tea before we got the ferry back and drove back to Pam's. Perth traffic is awful and it took a while.

When we got back we started to get ready for a BBQ. I washed down the outside chairs and the table to remove spiders, Pam showed us a nasty red-back, while Pam and Anna sorted out food. Roger (not Pam's boyfriend )and De and Matt (fake brother and sister) came round and we'd a lovely evening eating kangaroo sausages (which, strangely are not commonly eaten in Australia!) ribs and burgers. Pam had made some salads to go with the meat and bought some bread. Anna made me an amazing cake. It was a kangaroo warning sign, covered in yellow, white chocolate with a milk chocolate kangaroo and a cream and passion fruit filling. It was very delicious. I was sung happy birthday and eventually got the candles to go out, despite them being the kind that like relighting.

It was a very enjoyable and special birthday.

Josh x