Holidays. Week 3. Monday. Prospective
destination: Phillip Island (weather permitting). Forecast: cloudy with a
chance of rain.
That, dear reader, was the knife’s edge on
which we all retired for the needful deep and dreamy on Sunday night. What was
the morning going to hold?
We awoke on the Monday to a sky 60% full of
stratocumulus clouds, but with a gusty south-easterly clearing things rapidly.
The would-be meteorologists in the community quickly showed their personality
tendencies towards either optimism or pessimism, but happily for all of us the
optimists won through. We bundled ourselves into the van and set off for the
Island, praying that the weather would stay fine.
for those who have never heard of it before: it is a little island inside Port
Phillip Bay, on which the city of Melbourne is built, and it is home to both a
MotoGP circuit and fairy penguins, not to mention picturesque little beaches
and nature trails. To clarify matters for anyone who is wondering, we did not
go to see the motorcycles.)
island and had a quick look around. It looked good – excellent beachside
boardwalks and hardly any tourists.
good Scrabble word, by the way) and recovering from the curse that is travel
sickness (fresh sea air does wonders) we ventured onto the nature trail.
asked for more. While most people go to Phillip Island during the evening to
see the penguins from a bit of a distance (by purchasing tickets to see the
famous Penguin Parade – they all march along the beach at around dusk, I believe),
we got to see them during the day, up close! Mother Catherine’s sharp eyes
spied a little penguin hiding under the boardwalk, and on closer observation
(which required the following manoeuvre – I think we should call it “The Postulant”;
don’t new gymnastic tricks get named after the person who first performs it?)…
…we saw…
(The fourth one is hiding just at the very right of the picture.) They didn’t
seem bothered by us at all, and were happy to just stare right back. Maybe they shared a secret sympathy with us
and somehow knew that we sometimes get called penguins too (especially during cappa
season).
Here is one of their little nesting boxes, which
have been placed all over this part of the island, presumably to encourage
their growth and development – I think they look a bit like little wooden
igloos:
could compare? Well, God is good, and brought the sun out for us so we could
enjoy these spectacular views as we walked:
(The postulants look just like a postcard, don’t you think? And did you notice how well the sky had cleared?)
Soon it was time for lunch, and we thought
we’d find a nice secluded beach for this. There was only a brief period of
anxiety when someone thought we were driving the wrong way down a one-way road
(which turned out not to be the case), but otherwise we made it there
uneventfully.
stroll along the beach:
was too strong:
far as they could on the rocks without getting their feet wet:
consideration (for the record, their feet did get wet):
spot for gathering material for meditation nonetheless!
eventually.
But do you know what? Coming back home to the convent after a grand
day like the one we had isn’t quite like coming home after a party and feeling
a bit sad it’s all over. Instead, we get to come back to the chapel where Our
Lord lives, to talk the day over with Him, to relive the magnificent sights and
sounds of the sea that He made and to wonder all the more at His works, from
the great, big, wide seascapes to the little things that
He keeps sort of like a secret surprise, waiting for us to find them – like
these!
