January 22-27, 2024

As mentioned in the previous post, the next day would be another long and rewarding one.  We would be heading out to Phillip Island for a day of sightseeing, wine tasting, and a visit to the famous nighttime penguin parade with Phillip Island Penguins, Wine Tasting and Dinner from Melbourne through Viator.  As with our other day long tour, we would leave mid-morning and not return until much later in the evening for a cost of $635 or $127 per person. 

Our pick-up location was in the center of town at the National Gallery of Victoria, which was founded in 1861 and is Australia’s oldest and most visited art museum.  Our bus soon arrived, and we loaded up in comfortable fashion as it wasn’t too crowded that day, giving us room to stretch out. Our tour guide turned out to be the son of the owners and lent a personal air to his narrative, a different experience from our tour on the Great Ocean Road, but equally entertaining. 

We set out from town and drove for about an hour to Caldermeade Farm, our first stop of the day.  Established in 1875, it’s a working dairy farm that operates a café and a few outdoor attractions (animal nursery and a playground) intended to keep you occupied for a few hours.  A primary appeal is watching their over 500 Jersey cows get milked twice a day with a giant circular milking machine.  The cows are milked 50 at time and fed with grain to increase milk productions and keep them docile.  It was an interesting contrast to the milking procedure our friend Doug’s (aka the Griz) cousin operates at his dairy farm in Ohio (https://3jmann.com/2023/04/16/cisco-fest-2022-part-one/).

Joanna and I split a couple of scoops of the ice cream they produce on site and thoroughly enjoyed its texture and taste before heading back to the bus.  This leg would take less than an hour as we made our way to Phillip Island and the seaside town of Cowes, the main township on the island.  Originally known as Mussel Rocks, in 1865, government surveyor Henry Cox returned from a holiday retreat in England and named the town he surveyed after the seaport town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, England.

In recent years Cowes has seen a rapid expansion in its size.  Many estates and apartments have been built in and around the town on what was previously rural farmland.  An estimated 70% of houses are owned by absentee owners, most of whom live in and around Melbourne.  We’d spend a little over an hour here, with a chance to shop if we so chose.  Instead, we settled into our usual pattern of finding an outdoor table at the Hotel Phillip Island and spending the time wisely hydrating, that is consuming a few glasses of Australian wine. 

Our next stop was another short drive away, this one for wine tasting and lunch/dinner at Phillip Island Winery.  Phillip Island is part of the rural region known as Gippsland whose cool semi-maritime climate with low rainfall and tempering sea breezes help to produce subtle, complex pinot noir, and true cool-climate expressions of shiraz and chardonnay.

We started off with the wine tasting and our group quickly demolished a couple of decent sized Charcuterie boards full of appetizing offerings.  As we worked our way through the variety of wines they offer we soon were served the main course, which were numerous pizzas with a range of ingredients and a imaginative salad that proved to be the perfect accompaniment to the pies. 

We’d buy a couple of bottles of their wine to take with us and soon headed down the road to our next to the last stop at Nobbies Centre (we needed to continue killing time during the day in order to get to the Penguin stop at dusk), known as a site for Australia’s largest colony of Fur Seals.  Cobblestone rocks that jut out of the water are a dramatic strip of land attached to the Phillip Island coastline.  Our timing was good as we were there for the Golden Hour, allowing us a perfect sight over the glistening waters and rocky cliffs.  We’d enjoy a glass or two of sparkling wine and more snacks as we took in the view.

Soon the bewitching hour was upon us and we made our way to the Penguin Parade, the featured highlight of the tour.  Phillip Island is home to the largest Little Penguin colony in the world and each night of the year they leave the sea to return to their burrows on shore.  The little penguin is a species of penguin from New Zealand and are commonly known as fairy penguins, little blue penguins, or blue penguins, owing to their slate-blue plumage.  They are fossorial birds (one that is adapted to digging and which lives primarily (but not solely) underground.  The Australian little penguin is considered a separate species by a 2016 study and a 2019 study. 

There are also behavioral differences that help differentiate these penguins.  Those of the Australian lineage will swim together in a large group after dusk and walk along the shore to reach their nesting sites.  This may be an effective predator avoidance strategy by traveling in a large group simultaneously.  This has not been seen by those of the New Zealand lineage as they have only recently encountered terrestrial vertebrate predators (carnivorous marsupials).  Walking out to the viewing site would be too much for me and so while the others made the trek out to the parade, I stayed behind to enjoy a last glass of local red wine. 

Joanna and the others enjoyed their time out at the viewing area, but she mentions that the best viewpoint was back on the boardwalk, which sits close by the burrows that the penguins return to, and this allowed for a closer look at these amazing little birds getting ready for the night.  We again returned late in the evening to the apartment and after a good night’s sleep, made our way by Uber to the headquarters of Melbourne by Bike for our bike tour of the city. 

We’d had arranged for a mix of pedal and e-bikes, but upon our arrival a couple of the e-bikes were not available, which proved not to be an issue as we wouldn’t do much, if any climbing.  We started out and our first stop was at Sandridge Bridge, which originally carried railway lines over the Yarra River from 1886 to 1987.  In 2006, it was redeveloped as a pedestrian and cycle path, featuring public art.

The main artistic display is the ten Travellers figures that represent different periods of migration to Australia.  As the towering steel sculptures slowly slide across the Yarra (three times a day), they literally and figuratively represent the journey made by migrants from all over the world and celebrate their many contributions to the state.  Meanwhile, the sculpture fixed to the riverbank represents the existing Koorie community and their enduring presence.  There are glass panels between the figures which list the originating countries and number of Melbourne immigrants.

Our next stop was at the Shrine of Remembrance, a war memorial in Kings Domain on St Kilda Road built to honor the men and women of Victoria who served in World War I.  It now functions as a memorial to all Australians who have served in any war and is one of the largest war memorials in Australia.  We rode on to Fitzroy Gardens where we stopped to check out Cooks Cottage (A memorial to Captain James Cook, R.N., discoverer of the east coast of Australia).  He is supposed to have lived in the Cottage (which originally stood on an extremity of the village of Great Ayton, Yorkshire) and the Conservatory (Opened in opened in 1930, it is home to spectacular floral displays).

Moving on we made our way to the neighborhood of Carlton and a famous café and bakery there, Brunetti Classico.  Our guide had an arrangement here whereby we would each get a free beverage, which we enjoyed as we sampled various baked treats we had purchased, some to eat there and some for back at the apartment.  This is an incredible establishment, and one knew that if you lived nearby, you would be eating something here nearly every day. 

After our break we made one more stop at Queen Victoria Market, a major landmark in the central business district (CBD).  Covering over 17 acres, it is the largest open-air market in the Southern Hemisphere.  Constructed in stages from the 1860s and officially opened in 1878, it is the last remaining major market in the CBD, and along with Prahran Market and South Melbourne Market, the last of the city’s Victorian era markets still operating.  It is listed on both the Victorian Heritage Register and the National Heritage List, and is one of Melbourne’s major tourist sites, attracting approximately 10 million visitors annually.

We locked up the bikes and entered the main building which was full of the typical kinds of stalls one would find the world over, butchers, bakers, produce, as well as specialty shops for clothing, stationary, and toys.  Exiting we walked across a driveway to check out the annex which was which was twice as large as the main building with an even larger selection.  We paused outside to consume some freshly made donuts, as if we needed anymore sweets (no one, I repeat no one turned down their donut) which gave us the needed fortification to unlock the bikes and return to the start of the tour.

Back at the apartment we had another supermarket dinner as we prepared for our flight the next morning to Cairns on the northeastern coast, our gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.  Our stay in Melbourne had been a good one, a beautiful city leaving us wanting more.  The three specific extended days (tennis, ocean road, and penguin parade) meant little exploration of the city at large, a fact we can rectify if and when we return to Australia. 

Links

Phillip Island Tour: https://www.viator.com/tours/Melbourne/Phillip-Island-Food-and-Wine-Tour-with-Penguin-Parade-from-Melbourne/d384-263968P6

National Gallery of Victoria: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/

Caldermeade Farm: https://caldermeadefarm.com.au/

Cowes: https://www.visitmelbourne.com/regions/phillip-island/destinations/cowes

Hotel Phillip Island: https://www.hotelphillipisland.com.au/

Phillip Island Winery: https://www.phillipislandwinery.com.au/

Nobbies Centre: https://www.penguins.org.au/attractions/nobbies-centre/

Penguin Parade: https://www.penguins.org.au/attractions/penguin-parade/

Melbourne by Bike: https://melbournebybike.com/

The Travellers: https://citycollection.melbourne.vic.gov.au/the-travellers/

Shrine of Remembrance: https://www.shrine.org.au/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwhb60BhClARIsABGGtw_45AQ0SzNr7Lp1W5gwFeUuuKy6ssnqVSOKxWMo8VD_XdfWUML6DEAaAuG7EALw_wcB

Brunetti Classico: https://brunetticlassico.com.au/

Queen Victoria Market: https://qvm.com.au/