Magical Day-A Wedding -Fairy Penguin Counting

It is a little before 7.00 am Sunday morning here in Tasmania where I live. Yesterday was a truly magical day. We attended the wedding ceremony of on of my teaching colleagues in the afternoon. The ceremony was in a bush park setting. There was not a cloud in the sky and the air was filled with the rich scent of eucalyptus leaves. When you looked int the clearing there were hundreds of dragonflies in the air but they did not impact the ceremony in any way. The bride looked beautiful.

In the evening we joined approximately 100 other people in counting the fairy population at Lillico Beach which is nearby. WHAT AN EXPERIENCE! We were asked to arrive by 7.45. We checked in ,were given our instructions and had red cellophane placed over our torches. We set off in 4 groups to walk along the shingle beach. This proved a bit challenging at times. People were stationed every 20 metres. Once we had our spot we had to sit without talking or moving until 11.00 when the count was over. I positioned myself with my fleecey cushion on a large piece of driftwood. At 10.00 the little penguins started to come back home  to feed their chicks from their day of fishing at sea. We used our torches to count the ones in the sector to our left. I had 16 in my sector over the counting interval whilst my husband 20 metres to my left had over 40. At one stage one little penguin came and sat right behind me less than 12 inches away after he had negotiated the rocky shingle beach and the steep little bank we were on. Another walked 3 inches in front of my feet. It truly was a magical experience. At 11.00 we packed our things, joined the other bobbing red lights coming along the beach and walked back to hand in our counting cards.We were home in bed by 11.45pm