My top 10 Phillip Island Highlights

Over the summer holidays we spent five nights in Phillip Island, for the second year in a row. This year we were lucky to be able to rent a holiday house from Andy's school, located at the school's campsite in Cowes in Phillip Island. Andy's school allows staff to rent cabins at their two campsites (the other one is in Healesville) during the school holidays. In the Cowes site they also own a four bedroom family house that staff can rent, so we took advantage of this job perk and spent six days there in mid-January this summer.

In no particular order (except for number 1!), here are my top 10 highlights from our holiday.

1. Mom's birthday and sunset on Woolamai beach

I'm starting with the last thing we did on holiday, but it was also my favourite. Our last night of the holiday was the day before my mom's birthday. As I knew we'd just be packing up and travelling home on her actual birthday I thought it would be nice to have a little birthday celebration the night before. Cape Woolamai is the south eastern tip of Phillip Island and has the longest beach on Phillip Island. It's also where you can watch the most glorious sunset over the wild ocean waves and windswept beach.  

We arrived about two hours before sunset and spent time running around on the beach, writing our names and in the sand, and sand boarding with boogie boards on the dunes that line the beach. It was very windy which always makes the kids extra energetic (read: crazy).

Just before the sunset we surprised my mom with a birthday cake, which we ate while the sun went down. It was the perfect way to celebrate our lovely mom/Nannie and to wrap up our holiday.

We had to sit up in the sand dunes to keep out of the wind!

2. Morning walks with Andy

Every morning Andy and I got up and went for a walk along the beach to the main street in Cowes to get a coffee. Going for walks together is not something we get to do in every day life, and only possible because my parents were with us. It was a great way to start the day and nice to have some alone time together. We generally went to G'day Tiger, a small café with excellent coffee along with a small selection of pastries and sandwiches. We did try two other cafés during our stay but kept coming back to G'day Tiger, which we discovered way back in 2018 when we first visited Phillip Island with Andy's parents. 

3. Ella's playmate

Two days into our stay another family arrived to stay in one of the cabins on the school campsite. The dad was one of Andy's colleagues, and they had two children aged 13 and 11. I initially thought our kids wouldn't get along because of the age difference, but their 13-year-old daughter and Ella instantly hit it off. She was just excellent with Ella and the two of them spent hours swimming together, taking out the paddle board, and searching for shells. It's a shame this family don't live closer to us in Melbourne as their daughter would have been a perfect babysitter in a year or two!

4. Our holiday house

Renting out the house owned by Andy's school had a lot of advantages. First, the location was excellent. The camp is located on the beach just east of Cowes, in the area of Silverleaves. We literally walked out the back gate to this view:

We were also able to use some of the camp facilities, such as the BBQs, water sports equipment (we used a paddle board and boogie board but there were kayaks to use as well), table tennis tables, and other sports equipment. 

The house itself was pretty big and we had a lot more space than in our actual house in Melbourne. The kids were thrilled that it had an upstairs, and as a result played up in their room together a lot more than they would at home. 

We spent a lot of time at the beach behind the house and it was perfect!

There were a few downsides to the house, it wasn't kitted out the same way that a regular holiday house would be, so we had to bring all our own linen, blankets, pillows etc. There also wasn't much in the way of pots and pans. And as the house is where the teachers stay when they use the camp the bedrooms are all set up with two single beds. But these were minor inconveniences and overall it was a fantastic place to stay, and no doubt we'll be back again in the future.

5. Ollie's games

Ollie has developed a real interest in cricket this summer, and while we were in Phillip Island Andy picked up a small cricket bat for him (the ones at the camp were too big as they are meant for teenagers). He wanted to play all the time, and in particular he wanted to play "family cricket"... ie everyone participates. If given a choice of playing cricket or going to the beach, Ollie always picked playing cricket. 

There was a pool table in our house and this was another source of amusement for him. He spent hours rolling the balls into the pockets, or into "jail" as per the game he'd made up in his head. Ollie + any type of ball = hours of entertainment.

6. Phillip Island Wildlife Park

My parents took the kids to this nature park where you can see many species of Australian animals, and feed wallabies, kangaroos and emus. I didn't actually go, but this has made my top 10 highlights for two reasons... first of course it gave Andy and I time to go for a walk on the beach and to brunch alone. We ended up at Mon Dieu, a café just off the main street in Cowes that we hadn't been to before, and I highly recommend. The second reason is how excited the kids were when they got back and told us about their day at the park. They couldn't wait to tell us about all the animals they saw and fed. According to my parents they spent hours walking around the 60 acre park and were really interested in everything they saw. They certainly look happy and engaged in all the pictures of their afternoon here!

7. The beach at low tide

At high tide our beach was right up to the ramp shown in one of my pictures above. But at low tide the sand seems to go on for miles... creating little sand islands and very shallow pools of water for the kids to play in. We set up our beach chairs on one of these "islands" one morning and had the best time. Ella spent time with her teenaged friend and the paddle board, and Ollie loved being pulled on the boogie board by Andy. My parents and I set up our beach chairs on our own little island - until the tide finally came in and washed our island away for another day!

We also walked home from dinner on our first night during low tide. The kids loved being able to run across such a wide expanse of sand, occasionally jumping in puddles or shallow water.

8. Having time to read

Nothing says "holidays" to me more than having copious amounts of time for leisurely reading. With so many adults around, it was possible to read a lot more than normal. The book I was reading was "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter and was a perfect holiday read for me. I read at the holiday house, on the balcony, on the deck, on the beach, and in the evenings before bed. So much time to read. Bliss.

9. Salvo's store

There is the BEST Salvo's op shop I've ever been to in Cowes. It is designed so well, you almost forget you are in an op shop. I could have spent hours in there, and indeed I think my mom and I did spend at least an hour poking around while my dad and Andy took the kids sand boarding for the morning. I ended up with some pretty good finds, and even went back with Andy on our last day for one last look.

Upon returning to Melbourne I ran into a mum-friend from Ella's school who has a holiday house in Cowes. We've discovered a mutual love for this shop, and for shopping for preloved clothes in general. We've made a pack to not buy any new clothes for ourselves for the next six months. We originally both wanted to do a year but decided that sticking to six months seemed like a much more achievable goal, and we could reassess where we were at in July. I'm excited, I've wanted to do a challenge like this for years and I'm very happy to find a kindred spirit to do it with! (Update: I've made it through the first month with no new clothes, however I may be developing an obsession with finding good op shops in Melbourne...)

10. Walking the boardwalks at the Nobbie's Centre

The views as you walk the 1.2km loop around the western coast of Phillip Island are absolutely stunning. The wild waves crash into the coast, which seems untouched by humans (well except for the boardwalk of course). My parents, Ella and I arrived early one morning, before it got busy with tourists and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. During our walk we were lucky to catch a glimpse of two baby penguins that were nesting, waiting for their parents to come home from a day at sea with food for them. 

And that wraps up our summer holiday to Phillip Island. This is the third visit we've had to Phillip Island and was surely not our last. It's such a perfect destination for us with the kids at the age they are at, and now with the possibility of renting such affordable accommodation with Andy's school I'm sure we'll be back soon!