French - Victoria - Islands of Australia

French Island is a large, mostly undeveloped island in the Western Port in Victoria, Australia, about 18 kilometers by 12 kilometers, or twice the size of the neighboring inhabited Phillip Island. The northern seventy percent of the island is a National Park, and there are only about 60 permanent residents, most serving the park or the tourist trade in one way or another.

Salt marshes border the coasts, while flat, flowering heath land and mangroves dominate the interior. Six hundred plants (including 100 species of orchid) and more than two hundred bird species flourish there, along with koalas, Sambur deer, water rats, and the rare long-nosed potoroo, a species of rat-kangaroo. The koalas flourish so well in this protected habitat that many have to be transferred to other nature reserves on the mainland in order to keep the population from outstripping French Island’s resources.

The island has no electricity or medical service, and only one small shop and post office in the tiny hamlet of Tankerton. No tourist vehicles are allowed -- visitors must arrive by passenger ferry. However, the opportunity to experience unspoiled nature by camping, hiking, and biking is unparalleled.

Some small-scale farming and sheep and cattle grazing still takes place in the southern part of the island.