Phillip Island is Victoria's wildlife island: every evening at sunset, hundreds of little blue penguins —the smallest in the world— emerge from the sea and waddle across the beach to their burrows in the famous Penguin Parade, one of Australia's best-loved natural spectacles. But the island has much more: wild koalas, the fur seal colony at Seal Rocks, surf beaches, a MotoGP circuit and a historic farm.
Just over 90 minutes from Melbourne, Phillip Island (Millowl in the Boonwurrung language) combines nature and adrenaline in a small, manageable area. Most of its wildlife attractions are run by Phillip Island Nature Parks, a not-for-profit organisation that reinvests its takings in the conservation of the penguins, koalas and the coastal ecosystem.
This guide covers Phillip Island with a practical eye: how the Penguin Parade works and which ticket to choose, where to see koalas and fur seals, what Churchill Island is, how to get there from Melbourne (and why myki doesn't work on the bus), how to pay at a cashless venue and when the MotoGP takes place. All with verified prices in Australian dollars and tips so you don't miss the sunset.
Phillip Island is Millowl to the Boonwurrung (Bunurong) people of the Kulin Nation: their Yallock-Bulluk clan came to the island in summer to feed on shellfish, fish, small marsupials and mutton birds (shearwaters). Because their coastline faces Western Port Bay, the Bunurong were among the first Aboriginal people in Victoria to have contact with European navigators. The explorer George Bass sighted the area in 1798, and on neighbouring Churchill Island what is considered Victoria's first European garden was planted in 1801. The island, named after Governor Arthur Phillip, was later settled with farms and seaside resorts. In the 20th century it gained two icons: the Penguin Parade, which began drawing visitors from the 1920s onwards and is today both a tourist and a conservation phenomenon, and motor racing, with the first Australian Grand Prix held here in 1928 and the permanent circuit opened in 1956. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The smallest state on the mainland and the richest during the gold rush: land of the Kulin nations, colonised from 1835 around Melbourne, transformed by the gold of Ballarat and Bendigo and by the Eureka rebellion of 1854, seen as the cradle of Australian democracy.
Read the history of Victoria →Some places make no sense on your own; with someone explaining them, they change completely. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. There are not many in Phillip Island, but the ones there are worth it. Tap the cards below and have a look.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before it was called Phillip Island, this island off Western Port Bay had — and still has — another name: Millowl (also recorded as corriong) in the language of the Boonwurrung (Bunurong) people, one of the five peoples of the Kulin nation of south-central Victoria. And it was no ordinary place: it was the country of the Yallock-Bulluk clan, who lived on it and cared for it long before any European arrived.
Like the rest of the Bunurong, the Yallock-Bulluk were saltwater people. They came to Millowl mainly in the summer months, when the island offered a seasonal feast: shellfish and fish from the coast, small marsupials and, above all, mutton birds — short-tailed shearwaters — migratory birds that nest in their millions in the dunes and whose chicks and eggs were an important food source. This coming and going with the seasons was part of a sophisticated way of managing the land, guided by knowledge built up over thousands of years.
Like all First Peoples, the Bunurong understood the island within the Dreaming: the landscape, the animals and the natural cycles were part of an order created in the Dreamtime, which people had a responsibility to respect and maintain. Millowl was not a possession but a relative and a responsibility. Because of their location on an open coast with sheltered bays, the Bunurong were also among the first Aboriginal people in Victoria to encounter European sailors, a sign of the huge changes that were about to come.
Europeans reached this part of the coast early. In January 1798, the explorer George Bass sailed into Western Port Bay in a small whaleboat and charted it, becoming one of the first Europeans to document the area. Shortly afterwards, in 1801, Lieutenant James Grant, in command of the brig Lady Nelson, stopped at a small neighbouring island and planted wheat, corn and other crops there: that 1801 garden on Churchill Island is considered the first European garden in all of what is now Victoria.
The larger island was named Phillip Island after Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales and founder of the colony of Sydney. During the first decades of the 19th century, the area was frequented by sealers and whalers, whose brutal, predatory activity had a devastating impact on marine wildlife and on the Bunurong themselves, many of whom suffered violence, abduction and displacement.
With the founding of Melbourne in 1835 and the spread of colonisation across Victoria, Phillip Island gradually filled with settlers who set up farms, raised cattle and sheep and exploited the island's resources. Bunurong country was taken without treaty or compensation, and the Aboriginal population — devastated by violence, disease and dispossession — was pushed off its ancestral lands, although its connection to Millowl never entirely died out.
The 20th century gave Phillip Island the two icons it is known for around the world today. The first was motorsport: in 1928 the first Australian Grand Prix was held here, on a makeshift circuit laid out on the island's public roads. The passion for racing took permanent shape in 1956 with the opening of a permanent circuit, which in time would become the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit, home of MotoGP and considered one of the most beautiful tracks on the planet thanks to its seaside setting.
The second icon was the penguins. Little penguins had always nested in the island's dunes, but over the 20th century their nightly parade out of the sea began to draw onlookers and, little by little, crowds. What started as an informal phenomenon became the organised Penguin Parade, which over the decades turned into one of Australia's biggest wildlife attractions. That success, however, created a dilemma: urban growth at Summerland was threatening the penguin colonies.
The response was remarkable. From the 1980s and 1990s onwards, the Victorian government gradually bought up and demolished the houses of the Summerland estate to give the habitat back to the penguins, a rare case of 'de-urbanisation' for the sake of conservation. Management of the wildlife sites was handed to Phillip Island Nature Parks, a not-for-profit organisation that reinvests tourism revenue in research and conservation of penguins, koalas, fur seals and the coastal ecosystem.
Today Phillip Island is both a world-class nature destination and a model of managed conservation. The Penguin Parade welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, but under strict rules — no flash, no photos, viewing platforms that keep people at a distance — designed so that tourism doesn't harm the animals. The revenue funds research programmes on penguins, monitoring of the fur seal colony at Seal Rocks (the largest in Australia) and the protection of wild koalas.
The island combines this commitment to conservation with a busy tourist life: Cowes as the main town, bay and surf beaches, the historic farm on Churchill Island, the cliffs of the Nobbies and Cape Woolamai, and the MotoGP circuit that fills the island with racing fans every October. In miniature, it's a catalogue of Victoria's many faces: wildlife, sea, history and adrenaline.
At the same time, recognition of Millowl's deep history is growing. The Bunurong (Boonwurrung) people, Traditional Owners of the island, are increasingly involved in cultural interpretation, in caring for sites and in the story told to visitors, and many events begin with a Welcome to Country or an Acknowledgement of Country. Reclaiming the name Millowl and the voice of its ancestral custodians is part of a reconciliation that is still under way.
Visiting Phillip Island, then, is much more than seeing penguins: it's a glimpse of a place where wildlife, colonial history, a passion for motorsport and the ancient culture of the saltwater people live side by side on a small island, just a short trip from Melbourne but with a pulse of its own, set by the rhythm of the sea and the seasons.
