Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2009 | Page 57

FEATURE
named after the family.
St. Anne’s church also has the
grave of Maria Anne Granny
Smith in whose orchards the
Granny Smith apple was first
found and every year in the
suburb of Eastwood the ‘Granny
Smith Festival’ is held in her
honour.
But it was time to move on
to Phillip Island in Victoria, to
explore an island with place
names like Cowes and Ventnor
and see the Isle of Wight hotel.
And like our island, tourism
is big on Phillip Island with
approximately 3.5 million people
visiting it each year.
Phillip Island was originally
called ‘Snapper Island’ because
of its fish-like shape but in 1801
a Lieutenant John Murray onboard the ‘Lady
Nelson’ was sent to map the area and he
decided to rename the island after Captain
Arthur Phillip, Governor of the First Fleet
that sailed from England in 1709.
Nowadays there’s a bridge from San Remo
on the mainland across Bass Strait to Phillip
Island but years ago people travelling there
had to use a ferry from Western Point to the
jetty at Cowes. S.S. Genista, or ‘Ginny’ as
she was affectionately known, was named
after a yacht owned by Sir Richard Sutton
of the Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes, Isle
of Wight, a yacht famous for racing against
‘Puritan’ in the fifth America’s Cup in 1885
and for winning the first Round Britain Race
in 1887.
Phillip Island covers an area of 38 square
miles and driving along Back Beach Road in
the middle of the island, the landscape with
its windswept trees and cattle and sheep
grazing on the pastureland reminds me of
West Wight and the Military Road. But
today the January temperature is around
21°C with bales of hay in the fields and
the horses wearing rugs to protect them
from the heat. At Ventnor, masses of deep
blue agapanthus lilies grow on the roadside
but there’s no clue as to how the place
got its name. Before 1915 when a school
was built at Ventnor for the local children
with Ruby Bright as their head teacher, the
children had to walk or were driven in a dray
to school in Cowes.
But when I reach Cowes, Phillip Island’s
capital on the northern coast, I soon find
how the town got its name. In 1865 a
Commander Cox on board HMVS Victoria

was surveying off Phillip Island and he
officially changed the name of Mussel Rocks
to Cowes because it reminded him ‘of
Cowes on England’s Isle of Wight.’
And opposite the jetty is the Isle of Wight
hotel, originally built in 1870 by Francis
Bauer, a Swiss, and extremely popular from
1918 until the 1960s when Phillip Island
must have appeared nostalgically English to
people who had ties with ‘the old country’.
The hotel was known for its country food,
freshly-caught fish, sumptuous meals and a
friendly tame seal called Jack who flopped
down the stairs to welcome the visitors.
Other establishments that catered for visitors
from the mainland included a guest house
the owners had called ‘Carisbrooke’ after
Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight.
As I leave the town I spot a blue sign on
Thompson Avenue under a golden cypress
tree. It reads “Friendship Link, Cowes
Phillip Island Australia – Cowes Isle of Wight
United Kingdom.” I talked to Geoff Banks,
Mayor of Cowes, for a follow-up on the
Friendship Link after I came home. “Phillip
Island is a deligh FgV