Tuesday 3 September 2024 – Today’s excursion involved a couple of ferry journeys, and so we were very pleased to note that the high winds of the previous days had dropped. The forecast for the day was reasonably good – some sunshine and no rain. Our target for the day was a pair of islands south of Melbourne – French and Philip Islands – and we would be part of (yet) another “small group” tour.  We hied ourselves to the designated pickup point at the appointed hour – and waited for just long enough to be worried that Someone Had Blundered. Some 20 minutes later than our appointed pickup time, we phoned the organising company who reassured us that we were in the right place, just that the traffic was bad.

A few seconds after ringing off, a man came for us.  He was called Bill (photo later) and was in charge of a 20-seater bus which was going to be full. So, a “fairly small” group tour, then. The traffic was, indeed, pretty bad as Bill wrangled his bus through interminable queues and waits at traffic lights with only the odd acid remark about the driving ability of the other motorists. As well as that, he managed to engage us, and all the others he picked up, in conversation, and did a very skillful job at it, too – he could chat about any number of sports, political situations, a smattering of science, and he was very engaging. He also managed the very fine trick of being laconic and talkative at the same time – no mean feat.

The ferry to French Island leaves from Stony Point, over 80 km south of Melbourne, and Bill had a lot of pickups to do and a target of 1150, which was the time the ferry would leave – with or without us. He made it with seconds to spare and basically bundled half of us on the the ferry with instructions to meet (a) Scott, the catcher on French Island and (b) him later on (after he had taken the remaining passengers on a different tour), at about 3.30pm in the pub by the jetty on Philip Island. And so, come about 11.15, we were met by Scott

and his transport for the day for us.

This is an OKA, built specially for taking tourists round potentially tricky terrain.  It makes few concessions to comfort inside

and has quite the control bunker behind the wheel.

Before we set off, Scott briefed us on French Island, which is a very unusual place. 75% of it is National Park and officially a biosphere reserve, and 25% is settled.

The island has 110 inhabitants, no running water, no electricity. No rates, no police, no roads (just dirt tracks). There’s a single general store, which is also the post office and the fuel station. There’s a primary school, which has six pupils and two teachers. Some of the inhabitants are farmers, and there are sheep, horses and beef cattle on the island – no dairy farming, as it would be too expensive to deal with the milk.

The first thing we did was to go for lunch to meet Lee and Celia, a couple of inhabitants, at their smallholding, Mandalye Park Homestead.

There was a bit of a distraction as we exited the OKA, as, by the gate, there was a koala in the tree – and she had a young’un with her, which caused the usual ripple of excitement.

Scott estimated the age of this baby to be about five months. Koalas were introduced to the island over 100 years ago and have been so successful that they now have to be controlled as a population; they are so dim that they will simply eat a eucalyptus tree to death by consuming all its leaves. The Kangaroo Island koalas came originally from French Island, apparently.

Eventually we trooped inside the farmhouse for a fairly basic, but very pleasant lunch

and a chance to chat with Lee, who had been there on a permanent basis for about seven years, having started out as a weekend visitor to the island. We were nearly joined by a peacock, which caused a bit of a stir,

and outside one could see the evidence of how strong the winds had been over the recent days.

From talking to Lee, it was clear that the island’s appeal was very niche. Life is entirely off-grid: his water comes primarily from catching rain, although he has a borehole which is only slightly brackish, so livestock will drink it and it can be boiled for human consumption; electricity is from solar panels and battery with a generator backup; sewage is based on a septic tank; mobile coverage drifts over sporadically  from the mainland; vehicles can only get to the island via a barge (see later) which can take a couple of cars or a truck and is very expensive. It’s a strange life, but our chap wouldn’t now exchange it for anything else.

For over 70 years the island’s economy was dependent upon chicory – cultivated for the root, not the familiar salad leaf. The root has long been cultivated in Europe as a coffee additive or substitute, it was, inter alia, the basis for ersatz coffee such as Camp Coffee. It was introduced to the island in 1895. The site had an old chicory kiln, used for drying the roots.

After lunch, Scott bounced us around the island in the OKA, with occasional stops. From a wildlife point of view, we saw a couple more koalas, any number of purple swamp hens,

Cape Barren geese (here with their goslings),

black swans,

and, excitingly, an echidna, an animal Jane was very keen to see. This one was a short-beaked echidna.

This is also known as a spiny anteater and, like the platypus (which I am very keen to see at some stage) is a monotreme, meaning it only has one bank of oars is a marsupial mammal which lays eggs but suckles its young. They are normally very shy, so we were lucky to get such a decent view of one.

As well as the wildlife, we saw some tamelife: beef cattle

and horses.

We also saw some sheep, which were being guarded by an alpaca, but sadly whizzed past them before we could get a photo.

Not all life is welcome on the island. It has a problem with pests such as rabbits and, increasingly, deer; but the real demons are feral cats, which they are trying to eradicate because they cause such havoc among the other wildlife which have no defences against them. There are cat traps across the island

(apparently KFC is the bait of choice) and motion-sensitive cat-cams such as this one.

Yes, there it is. There.

We passed the island’s fire station

with its indicator of likelihood of bush fire;

the school, and the general store.

Approaching the coast, we passed mangrove swamps

and reached the barge which enables vehicular access to the island.

Apparently it costs about Aus$900 to use the barge – a very expensive way of transporting anything.

The principal roads across the island are high-quality dirt tracks, but Scott took us off these on to rougher trails

which run through the National Park, showing how densely scrubby it is, as opposed to the open spaces of the settled portion of the island.

Then it was time to return to the jetty

and await the ferry

which would take us on to Philip Island. It was clear that A Lot Of Shopping had been done on the mainland.

We speculated that this might possibly be stock for the General Store.

And so we said goodbye to French Island – a funny old place, with a funny old lifestyle. I dare say we could have seen a lot more of the allegedly diverse birdlife on the island, but to do so would have taken a lot of time.

Although it’s smaller than French Island, it’s immediately obvious that Philip Island is more conventionally settled.

Amusingly for us Brits, one lands on the north of the island at a place called Cowes; but the island, although it also has a place called Ventnor, is much smaller than the Isle of Wight.

We settled down in the Philip Island Hotel for coffee and beer whilst we awaited Bill. He came along and we rejoined his bus for a trip out to the area where live the animals that have made Philip Island famous – Little Penguins; the island supports a colony of some 40,000 of these, the smallest known penguin species. En route, we noted that penguins weren’t the only wildlife to be seen.

Although the island is noted for its penguin population, it is also home to short-tailed shearwaters (commonly called “mutton birds”), fur seals, wallabies (like the one above) and eastern barred bandicoots. We’d hoped to see one of these last creatures, but failed, sadly.

We eventually reached the western point of the island, where the penguins make their burrows. The westernmost point is marked by The Nobbies

where there is a visitor centre and a boardwalk along which one can walk to examine the various burrows of the Little Penguins.

Bill

walked us around the boardwalk, pointing out penguin burrows both natural

and man-made.

At one stage, people lived in the area and this threatened the penguin population; so the people were actually moved away and these man-made burrows created to help re-establish the penguin population. It’s now self-sustaining so there is no need for more man-made burrows.

A couple of the burrows had, we thought, got penguins inside them. It was difficult to be sure, though.

There were cape barren geese here, too

along with their goslings

and I caught sight of a white-faced heron among the rocks.

The general view was quite striking

with lots of breaking waves

contributing to the general mistiness of the air. As we got towards sunset, the area became very popular

as people gathered for a daily event for which Philip Island is widely-known – the Penguin Parade. There are even signposts to the Penguin Parade Centre and Car Park, such is the popularity of this fairly unique phenomenon. After some time at the Nobbies, Bill took us to the Penguin Parade Centre which is quite gob-smackingly big.

When I saw this, my heart sank, as I envisaged the ruthless monetisation of some poor unfortunate penguins.

The whole Penguin Parade thing is a well-oiled machine, with people turning up in their hundreds as the sun goes down, all to see these penguins making a dash from the sea to their burrows on land.

We were actually booked to be part of a premium group – a ranger-led viewing of this parade and prime seating.  Our guide for this was a nice lass called Annie

who explained at length and with great enthusiasm about the penguins, their life cycle and what was going to happen. She also explained that photography was forbidden, something I found very frustrating. I had read that the flashes on cameras and phones were distracting and stressful for the penguins and so I thought that meant that a lot of care would be taken to avoid flashes going off. But no, all photography was forbidden. I can understand the reasoning behind this, but that doesn’t stop me from being annoyed that I was penalised for the stupidity of others who simply don’t know how to turn off their cameras’ flash functions.

Anyhoo…

Having carefully briefed us and equipped us with binoculars and earpieces so that we could (almost) hear her commentary, Annie led us towards our prime viewing spot, via a couple of displays in the centre, such as this rather cute one,

which looks rather cute and pointless, but actually portrays something valid and important – helping penguins after oil spills. When these happen, volunteers seek out penguins who have been affected, and put them in these jackets (knitted also by volunteers) to prevent them trying to clean themselves and so ingesting the oil while they’re being transported to somewhere where they can be cleaned off before being released back into the water.  We particularly like the jacket on the left, which is a nod to a certain publisher.

There’s also a display of a fox with a dead penguin in its mouth. Foxes have been a huge problem on the island, as they don’t just take one bird but can kill several dozen in a frenzy. There has been a fox eradication programme on the island over the past quarter-century, and they can now declare the island fox-free.  Just one problem, though; there’s a land bridge over which foxes could make their way on to the island, so there’s a motion-detecting camera by the bridge to alert people when a fox comes over. This way it can be tracked and eliminated.

We joined the crowds heading towards the beach

and took our reserved seats in a brand-new grandstand which offered us a, well, grandstand view. The sun went down, and the only light came from some orange and yellow lamps illuminating the area; apparently, penguins don’t see well in this part of the spectrum, so it doesn’t affect or distract them.

The penguins’ main predators are hawks and other large birds. Their strategy therefore for getting from the sea across the exposed area of beach to the safety of their burrows in the dunes, involves a) waiting until after dark, and b) making a run for it in sizeable groups where there is safety in numbers. In almost complete darkness, it was difficult to see clearly what was going on. They must have emerged from the sea, but it seemed that groups of penguins just materialised and started making their way up the beach on their penguin highway – the path that they take time after time as they leave the water and head to their burrows, which might be quite some distance away. I was a good boy and didn’t try to take photos; OK, officer, it was too dark, really. The centre is good enough to provide some, like this one, which shows the penguins leaving the water.

There’s also a YouTube video showing what happens

though Jane found something which is far more fun – an Andrew Cotter commentary special, done in his own inimitable style.

The whole penguin journey is, indeed, hugely commercially exploited. But Annie pointed out that the centre is entirely and only paid for by visitors, and their contribution enables research into these penguins and funds conservation and protection for them. And it is rather well done; tightly controlled so that crowds don’t distract and distress the penguins, and ensuring an environment that means the penguins can survive and thrive.

In theory, we might have seen a bandicoot, but I think the darkness, the noise and the crowds make it near-impossible to see a live one.  The best we could do was one in a display case.

The final thing Annie showed us was an artwork made entirely out of the detritus found on the beach and in the water. She asked us to guess what it was that the seals were made out of,

and no-one got it right: cigarette butt filters. That was a sobering message to leave us with.

By this stage it was about 7.45pm and we had a two-hour journey back to Melbourne, so it was very late by the time we arrived back at the apartment. However, we hadn’t got an early start for the next day, the main feature of which was going to be lunch with friends, so that wasn’t a problem. The morrow would be our last full day in Melbourne, but unlikely to feature anything particularly worthy of comment; so it’s likely to be a couple of days until I next update these pages. I hope you’ll be here to read them when that happens.

 

* For those giving the title a blank look, this is a reference to a 1970s advertisement for a chocolate biscuit bar called a Penguin. The voice over was done by Derek Nimmo, an actor who achieved wide recognition for his ability to portray posh people who had a stammer.