French Island Marine National Park

French Island Marine National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

French Island lies in the middle of Western Port, the large, shallow, tidal bay seventy kilometres south-east of Melbourne, and the marine national park protects the sea, mudflats and mangroves along fifteen kilometres of its northern shore. It must be said plainly that the marine park is not a place with facilities or a way in: it is a belt of water and tidal flat, seen from the shore of the island, from the ferry or from a kayak at high tide, and in practice a visit to it is a visit to French Island itself, two thirds of which is a national park on land, and which is one of the most curious places in Victoria. Although it is twice the size of its famous neighbour, Phillip Island, to which a bridge leads, French Island has no bridge, no mains electricity or water, no sealed roads, no local council, and barely more than a hundred residents, who rely on generators, solar panels and rainwater tanks.

It is reached only by a small passenger ferry, which crosses in about fifteen minutes, several times a day, from Stony Point, the terminus of a suburban railway line from Melbourne by way of Frankston, and from Cowes on Phillip Island, to the jetty at Tankerton; visitors' cars cannot be taken. One gets about on foot, on a bicycle, brought over on the ferry or hired near the jetty, on the gravel and sand roads, or on a guided tour by four-wheel-drive bus run by island residents, which meets the ferry, visits the old prison farm, the wetlands and the koala areas, and includes lunch. Near the jetty are a general store, which serves as cafe and post office, a campground in the national park at Fairhaven, reached by a walk of five kilometres along the coast, and a few farm stays. Marked walks lead to a lookout at the Pinnacles and through heath and woodland.

Visiting French Island Marine National Park: what you will see

The marine national park was declared in 2002, as one of a system of highly protected marine areas created in Victoria in that year, in which all fishing is forbidden, and covers 2,800 hectares; it lies within the Western Port Ramsar site and the biosphere reserve of the Mornington peninsula and Western Port. Western Port is a bay of mud, with a tidal range of up to three metres, so that at low water more than a third of its bed is exposed as a vast, gleaming plain cut by deep channels, and the park contains in a small compass all the habitats on which the life of the bay depends. Along the shore grows a fringe of the white mangrove, here close to the southernmost limit of mangroves anywhere in the world, low and shrubby in the cold climate, behind which lie wide salt marshes of glasswort, reddening in autumn; below the mangroves stretch the mudflats, and beyond them meadows of seagrass, which collapsed over much of the bay in the 1970s and have partly recovered. The seagrass and mangroves are the nursery of the bay's fish, King George whiting, snapper, flathead and garfish, and the channels are a breeding ground of the elephant fish, a strange, trunk-nosed relative of the sharks, and of the gummy shark.

On the mud feed the migratory waders for which Western Port is internationally listed, more than thirty species, some ten thousand birds, which breed in Siberia and Alaska and spend the southern summer here, among them the eastern curlew, the largest wader in the world and now critically endangered, the bar-tailed godwit, the red-necked stint, the curlew sandpiper and the grey-tailed tattler, with resident pied oystercatchers, black swans in thousands, pelicans, royal spoonbills, and white-bellied sea eagles, which nest on the island. The island behind has its own story. It was named by the French expedition of Baudin, whose boats charted the bay in 1802; settlers tried sheep, salt, and above all chicory, which was grown and dried in brick kilns, some of which survive, for a century; and from 1916 to 1975 a prison farm occupied the south-eastern corner. In the 1880s a few koalas were released, and in the absence of foxes and of the chlamydia infection that afflicts mainland koalas they multiplied so freely that they repeatedly stripped their food trees; since 1923 many thousands have been caught and sent to restock forests all over Victoria and South Australia, and French Island remains the most reliable place in the state to see a wild koala, often low in a roadside tree. The island has also been kept free of foxes, and feral cats are being eradicated, which allows the long-nosed potoroo, a small, rare rat-kangaroo, to thrive, together with some 230 species of birds, more than a hundred kinds of native orchid, and heathlands that are brilliant with flowers in spring.

French Island Marine National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The island can be visited all year, the ferry running daily, with a fuller timetable in summer and at weekends; the last crossing back must not be missed, since there is little accommodation. Spring, from September to November, is the best season, with the heath and the orchids in flower, koalas active and with young, and the migratory waders arriving; summer, from December to February, is warm, 20 to 28 degrees, dry and dusty, with the waders present in full numbers, biting march flies, snakes about and, on days of total fire ban, a real danger, when it is unwise to go;

autumn is mild and calm; winter is cold, wet and muddy underfoot, with swans and ducks in the wetlands. The state of the tide decides what is to be seen on the shore: the birds feed on a falling and rising tide and roost at high water, and kayaking over the flats is possible only near the top of the tide. Bring water, food, sun protection, insect repellent and a bicycle repair kit, for there is nowhere to buy anything beyond the store. Allow a full day. Phillip Island and its penguin parade are a short ferry ride away.