The Penguin Parade, for many the highlight of the island, simply has to be seen to be believed. However you look at it, this is one attraction which you are going to tell all your friends about, and it certainly goes on my list of things you must do before you die - but just how far do these people have to go to make a natural wonder such as the march of the penguins on Phillip Island attractive to the Disneyland set? Seen from the air, the site of the Penguin Parade actually looks like somebody has built a go-kart track and is just waiting for the karts to be delivered. On Kangaroo Island, we had all stood on a little wooden boardwalk and watched the penguins sauntering up the beach from the sea at their own pace, waiting patiently while they wandered randomly all over the place checking out every tiny piece of driftwood on the way home. On Phillip Island, the whole spectacle of the Little Penguins returning to feed their young has been made into something approaching a fairground attraction. Down by the beach, rows of seats are arranged in tiers, and the audience carefully shuffle in and cram themselves up tight against each other as though going to see a football match. At dusk, or whenever they decide to show up, the penguins start to return from the sea - but instead of being watched through binoculars by a handful of gawkers on a distant boardwalk as on Kangaroo Island, they are immediately faced with hundreds of people sitting in neat little rows in the stands calling out to them as though they are players coming out onto the pitch for the start of a match. This is where things start to get truly bizarre. Having found their way back to the beach, the Little Penguins get into single file and shuffle onto a narrow sandy pathway which leads away from the water and then winds for quite a distance along the edge of the neighbouring patch of thick grass bordering the sand dunes. Next to this path, following it all the way, a wooden boardwalk with railings on either side allows visitors to get up from their seats in the "stadium" and walk along next to the penguins as they make their way along their own path. At various points along the journey, penguins will turn off and disappear into the grass or underneath the boardwalk to where their chicks are waiting, while the rest carry on waddling along their sandy pathway. Occasionally, a penguin will take a sudden interest in whoever is walking along beside him and will waddle off the sand and over to the barrier to peer up at them with interest for a moment before returning to the parade. The best way I can describe the entire experience is to compare it to watching the London Marathon. Imagine the runners jogging along the street with crowds of people standing on one side of the road watching them go by. Now replace the joggers with penguins and imagine the spectators walking along next to them on the side of the road rather than just standing there watching and you've pretty much got the Penguin Parade.

It really is one of the most surreal things I've ever seen, but it's also one of the cutest so that more than makes up for it. The fact that photography isn't allowed at the Penguin Parade certainly doesn't mean that you can't get a look at it at all - just search the internet for "Phillip Island Penguin Parade" and you'll find no shortage of photos taken by local tour companies, and possibly even some tourists who just ignored the rules.

Perhaps one of the more unusual elements of the tour, and something which I wouldn't have even known I wanted to do before I did it, was that we were given the opportunity to stop off at an animal sanctuary where we were able to cuddle a baby Wombat. Now, I'm fully aware that a lot of people wouldn't even recognise a Wombat if it came up to them wearing an "I'm a Wombat" Tee-Shirt - and may even assume it to be some sort of bat - so it usually comes as something of a surprise to find that they are in fact just great big cuddly balls of fur. Even though Wombats strongly resemble giant rats and will happily dig their way down into anything remotely soft you give them until they've burrowed out an extensive tunnel system, they are , in fact, marsupials just like many other creatures in Australia. At the sanctuary, orphaned baby Wombats (called Joeys, like baby Kangaroos) are hand reared and taken care of until they can fend for themselves before being returned to the wild. We were able to go into the nursery and watch the joeys snuffling around their pen, before a keeper reached in and picked a particularly podgy looking one out and plonked it down in my arms, nearly knocking me off my feet. Wombats, even baby ones, aren't exactly light.

Back in Melbourne, we attempted to make what we had assumed would be simple arrangements to get across the Bass Strait to Tasmania for the final leg of our tour of Australia. We had both drawn the conclusion, looking at our guide books, that crossing from the mainland to Tassie (as the locals call it) would be exactly like hopping on the Isle of Wight ferry. We'd just walk onto the boat on one side and off on the other, paying as we boarded, and then sit back in our comfy seats for a couple of hours until we arrived in Devonport on the other side. Upon arriving in Melbourne, however, we had discovered that the ferry crossing on "The Spirit of Tasmania" was something you had to book in advance at a travel agents - but this wasn't a problem, as there was a large youth hostel just down the road which had it's own travel centre and would probably be able to get us a good deal on the fare anyway. We went in first thing in the morning, sat ourselves down in front of a helpful looking Australian travel agent who seemed to have a smile fixed permanently onto his face, and asked how much it would cost to take the Spirit of Tasmania across to Devonport. Without batting an eyelid, he first removed the smile from both of our faces by telling us that the trip would set us back over a hundred dollars per person one way. Then he totally removed our will to live by pointing out that it didn't matter anyway because there was currently only one sailing per day in either direction and the ferry was fully booked until... (and here, he tapped at his computer keyboard a few times for effect - although personally, I suspected he was playing Mine Sweeper) ...February. This was a little over two months. I think I may have allowed myself a little squeak of surprise at this point, which our agent must have noticed as he hastily went on to explain that it wasn't really the tourist season for Tasmania at the moment. I hadn't been aware that Australia had a tourist season. It has generally been my impression ever since I arrived in the country for the first time back in 1995, that people turn up in Oz all year round and that backpackers provide a large amount of their tourist income 365 days a year. I wondered briefly if we were going to have any problems finding things that were open once we got to the other side of the Bass Strait, but then pretended I hadn't on the basis that I'd been looking forward to Tasmania for far too long to allow anything to put a damper on the occasion. If things were closed, I told myself, we'd cross that bridge when we came to it - for now, our main concern was how we were going to get there in the first place, and a bridge probably would've been exactly what we needed.

Our only other option, assuming we didn't fancy the idea of swimming to Tasmania, was to fly. This is where the travel agent introduced us to Virgin Blue, which appears to be Australia's low cost airline and can fly you to just about anywhere you want to go within Australia even if the distance is so small that the plane has to start coming down again before it finishes taking off. I suppose it should've occurred to me before that there would have to be an airline for local people to take you cheaply from one town to the next - after all, the one thing that I have always said would annoy me if I ever decided to settle in Australia would be that, if I got fed up with the local shops, it would be a hell of a long way to the next town. As it turned out, Virgin Blue were able to get us both to Tasmania for a total of £57, which definitely had to be a much better deal than waiting two months that we didn't have and then paying 250 dollars for a ferry. So, after starting to think that we might not get to see Tasmania at all, we were glad to finally be on our way to the only Australian state I had yet to see... and apparently, it was the off season!

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.