Day 144 – Koala hunting on French Island

Another rough sleep, thanks to the upstairs neighbours, but we get a little refund thankfully

We try out the new filter coffee we have and it does the trick nicely – beats instant ????

Check out, grab a takeaway coffee and drive nearer to town

The Cowes Jetty hosts the ferry which takes us across the water for 15 mins to French Island

There’s a courtesy bus, upon arrival, that takes you to the island’s general store, French Island General Store (FIGS)

Time for another coffee: we order a coffee at the cafe, book onto an impromptu tour and pop up the road for a little walk while we wait for it to start

We only do a 30 minute return stroll on the road but we spot 10 Koalas!

Before going in the van for this trip, we grab a couple toasted Turkish sandwiches: one ham and cheese, the other spinach and ricotta

This tour is a drive to parts of the island that would be hard to reach without a car with the amount of time we have here

Our guide tells us a bit about French Island:

There are 105 perminant residents, up 4 last year, lowest it’s been is around 80
Home to the last undiseased population of Koala – opposite to rest of Aus as they have too many!
For many years they’ve been moving them to the mainland but they were dying of heartbreak (how damn sad and romantic!); now they’ve changed tactics to inserting contraceptive rods into around 400 of the female Koalas
The islanders govern themselves as municipality, for the bottom half of the island, meaning they take care of literally everything: fires to roads, healthcare to utilities and even their own rubbish
Even being a third larger than Phillip Island, they have their own primary school which has 6 students and 1 teacher, though each week includes one day the students go to the mainland to learn so they become acquainted with large social groups
Koalas aren’t indigenous to the island; they were actually were introduced as a courting giftbut the original number is lost to time
Bandicoots were introduced, as the species was going extinct, and has populated the entire island within 5 years
The 2 types of snakes on the island are killing lots of their Feral Cats
There are 2 family of Wedge-Tailed Eagles
There’s an old prison on the island which has been of lots of conversations on the island – it was proposed to be a retirement home but it was sold to a Chinese corporation… Ironically, these owners are currently locked up in China
Last season, there were 4 fires: 3 of these were lightning strikes, as lightning heats up the ground throughout the day, and the last was a tractor accident
In 1970, a nuclear power plant was proposed to be built and the locals had none of it!

Arriving back, we opt to walk ourselves to the jetty to get some more chances for spotting Koalas

We must have forgotten about the heat on our first walk as it was certainly a toasty 40 minute walk – worth it spotting another 4 Koalas though!

Arriving just in time, we get taken back to Phillip Island where we pick up the car and get on with a big drive

We decided a couple days in advance to get through to the other side of Melbourne and stay in Ballarat tonight so have to do 3.5 hours of driving, including going through Melbourne ????

It was about as enjoyable as it sounds, but we do make it through; we get checked in to Avenue Motel before a quick turn around to the centre for some dinner and a chill out

Ballarat has two churches in close proximity