Lady’s Phillip Island Day Tour from Melbourne Review

Today I want to share my review of a Phillip Island day tour from Melbourne with you. This island off Australia’s southern coast is known for its wildlife. It’s a great place to see penguins and koalas Down Under.

Phillip Island Day Tour

One of the best parts about visiting Australia is coming face-to-face with wildlife that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. From kangaroos to koalas, wombats to wallabies, the animal kingdom Down Under is as unique as it is cuddly.

And let’s not forget the birds, because the nightly penguin parade on Phillip Island near Melbourne is a natural phenomenon like no other.

Every evening throughout the year, thousands of Little Penguins (yes, that’s their official name) waddle ashore to go home to their burrows on the beach.

Visitors can watch them make their way over the sand as they emerge from the water just after dark.

Phillip Island Day Tour Review

Given my excitement to get as close as possible to Australia’s wildlife during my 3 days in Melbourne, I jumped at the chance to work with Gray Line Tours.

They offered me a complimentary place on their Penguin Parade with Penguins Plus tour.

I met the bus—a double decker—at Federation Square in Melbourne and settled in for the nearly 3-hour drive to Phillip Island.

Along the way, the guide for the Phillip Island day tour pointed out places of interest and told us about life and culture in Melbourne and greater Victoria.

Once on the island, the first stop on the Phillip Island day tour was Churchill Island Heritage Farm. It was a beautiful property located on a small island off the coast of its larger sibling.

Churchill Island Heritage Farm offered demonstrations about everything from sheep herding to sheep shearing.

The crowds at the demos were large, so I skipped them and headed for the wallaby enclosure instead. There I caught my first glimpse of these kangaroo cousins basking in the afternoon sun.

The next stop on my Phillip Island day tour was the Koala Conservation Reserve. There we walked along raised boardwalks, craning our necks to spot the little marsupials in their eucalyptus forest.

And spot them we did. Some were so close to the platform we had to stand back a bit to give them space. It was great to see koalas in their native land, and to learn about their habitats and activities at the nearby visitor center.

The next stop on my Phillip Island day tour was The Nobbies Centre. It was located on Point Grant, the western end of Phillip Island that looked out over Bass Strait.

The area had a long boardwalk that offered great views of The Nobbies rock formations and Seal Rocks, which seemed sadly devoid of seals that day.

The visitor center had a detailed exhibition about the marine and bird life in Bass Strait as well as a cafe and gift shop.

Back on the bus, it was a short, wallaby-studded ride to the main event of the Phillip Island day tour: the penguin parade.

First we made our way into the visitor center to learn about the penguins of the world (an exhibit that oddly left out the penguin colony I visited in southern Chile two years ago) and get food and drinks.

When daylight was sufficiently gone, we made our way down a set of boardwalks to the penguin viewing platforms.

My ticket for the Penguins Plus Phillip Island day tour gave me access to a special small viewing platform that offered a better view than the main one. I settled in there, eager to spot the tiny tuxedos while the ranger gave us a briefing.

My anticipation was rewarded shortly thereafter when a gaggle of penguins crested the dunes and made its way up the sand and along the trails.

Soon another group arrived, and before long the beach was full of waddling webbed feet. It was an amazing sight to witness.

At the end of the evening, I headed back to the bus and the bus headed back to Melbourne. On the way, the tour guide screened a penguin movie in keeping with the day’s theme.

But the best part of the day was that penguins weren’t the only theme.

We saw an impressive range of Australian animals on the Phillip Island day tour, and I was glad to have experienced something so unique before traveling a long way back to London.

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