Phillip Island Penguins and More Tour

Nov 17, 2011 by Joel

On Wednesday (9th Nov) my friend from Canada and I had a tour booked to visit Phillip Island to see the Little Penguins. If you have ever had a chance to look at what tours are available to visit Phillip Island there are so many choices that it can be quite difficult to decide which one to choose. In fact I picked up half a dozen brochures in the hotel that all had tours going to Phillip Island.

After visiting the Melbourne Visitors Centre and getting even more brochures. The decision ended up with a company called ‘A Tour With A Difference‘. While it was one of the more pricey options the list of what was included made it seem to be the best option. The other deciding factor was that it included a proper sit down meal for dinner, rather then the option of Pizza which was included with most of these tours.

The tour was to go and see the Little Penguins, which come ashore sometime around sunset. To allow for this the tour doesn’t get started until a bit later. Our pickup from the hotel was down for 12 midday. We got here a little early and were picked up right on time.

Going down to Phillip Island is not a short trip from Melbourne. However this tour does break it up a little bit, with the first stop being at a winery by the name of The Gurdies Winery, located in The Gurdies. Here we got to try six different wines and one port.

Unfortunately I am no wine lover, this is not due to lack of trying. I have probably tried anything up to 30 different wines over the past 10 years. As such I really could not find anything that I liked here, in terms of wine anyway. This of course does not mean that the wine isn’t good, just that I do not have a palette for it. The thing that I did like here was the view, it was actually quite spectacular.

From the winery it was onto a stop that was a little sweeter, the Phillip Island Chocolate Factory. The first part of this tour is through their factory, where you get to find out about how chocolate is made from the Cacao plant, right through the steps that are used for commercial production. I have previously seen chocolate making in Mexico and the two processes while they share some steps are quite different.

The next section of this tour shows some of the results of art forms made with Chocolate. There is a replica of the statue “David” made entirely from chocolate, and an oversized portrait of Dame Edna made from thousands or smaller chocolates. Finally for some fun a few different machines where you could draw your name or a picture in chocolate, and eat the result as well as a chocolate waterfall. There is an opportunity to do a little shopping here, however the chocolate is a little pricey, but still I bought a chocolate penguin.

From tasting wine and chocolate the next stop was a little different at Woolamai surf beach. Really just a short photo stop it was still a very nice spot to stop. Unless you were going swimming or sun baking there was not really much else to do here. This is quite a popular surf beach due to is location where it gets waves directly from the southern Ocean and Bass Strait.

From here there were two options to choose from. You could visit a wildlife centre, to see Australian wildlife, which did not interest me or my friend. While the other option was to spend an hour in the town of Cowes, which is on the northern shore around half way across the island.

This is a pretty nice little town although rather quiet at the time of our visit. We first walked out along the boardwalk before heading up the main street of town. It very much seems to be a town built for the tourist trade that passes through visiting the Penguin Parade and for the Phillip Island Racetrack, which offers racing from the Moto GP to V8 Supercars.

Also while in Cowes it was time for the dinner that was provided as part of the tour package. It was at a small cafe/bar by the name of Gullivers. There was a range of different meals to choose from but I end up having the Aussie beef burger, which turned out to be a pretty good burger, and tasted great.

The final stop before visiting the penguin parade was at a place called The Nobbies and Seal Rocks. The Nobbies is the name of two rocks which are just of the furthest western point of Phillip island. This is a really beautiful area except for the fact that it is also somewhere that a lot of seagulls nest so there is a lot of noise. However it is also a place that some penguins nest and other wildlife.

Finally for the highlight of the tour heading to the Phillip Island Penguin Parade. Which is located towards the western end of Phillip island on the southern coast. To try and give us an opportunity to get some better seats, we arrived at the Penguin Parade almost an hour before sunset. This was not a problem for us as we had chosen the Penguin Plus option.

The Penguin plus option is from my experience a great option if you want to see the penguins up close when they are first coming in. So we got seated probably about 40 minutes before sunset. As part of the Penguin Plus option you get a personal MP3 player with a short guided tour about the Little Penguins. Then about half an hour before sunset the ranger gave us a short talk about what to expect when the penguins started to come ashore and across in front of us.

Around 8.20 PM it was starting to appear rather dim, however there was still a little light. But then we saw the first penguin come up over the edge of the rocks. Followed by another, and another. I started trying to count them, and by the time I got to about 30, it was impossible as there were just so many Little Penguins in only this first wave. It would be easy to guess there could have been a couple of hundred. The majority of them stopped right in front of the seating for the Penguin Plus viewing, literally maybe 1 to 2 meters away.

You can find more information about the Penguin Parade through a previous post a few days ago. The Post is Phillip Island Penguin Parade. This was a really good tour and it was great to do this with such a small group, of just 10 people. I would definitely suggest this tour to anyone who wants to see the Little Penguins. Also I would suggest that you take a look at the other tours which are offered by ‘A Tour With A Difference‘, the tour concept is really very good.