Penguins of Phillip Island

Each evening at Phillip Island Nature Park, the world’s smallest penguins come ashore after a day fishing at sea — and your class watches it happen live. A host on location walks students through the Park’s conservation work: habitat protection, predator control and managed tourism, all built around a colony that shares its coastline with hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

Students investigate the balancing act at the heart of the unit — how a fragile coastal ecosystem is managed alongside the economic and social value of tourism — and put questions directly to a host standing on the Summerland Peninsula as the penguins make their way up the beach.