Volunteer with us!

Complete an application form to get started to your volunteering journey.

• For our regular volunteering roles, please fill out our ongoing application form.
• If you are a carer for someone else who wants to Volunteer please fill out our carers form.
• If you are under 18 please fill out our youth volunteering form.
• If you are a member of a Community Group, including the Friends of Churchill Island Society or the Surf Beach/ Sunderland Bay CoastCare Group please fill out our community group form.

For any enquires please reach out to our volunteer coordinator at volunteers@penguins.org.au or on 0437 476 833.

Opportunities 

Visitor Experience

Share your passion and knowledge with visitors from across Australia and all around the world in our Visitor Experience Role. These roles are based across our four sites: The Penguin Parade, Churchill Island, The Nobbies, and the Koala Conservation Reserve.

The Penguin Parade: Join our Visitors before the parade and help set their expectations and build their understanding of little penguins before the parade starts. Once the penguins reach the water's edge, volunteers are invited to join the penguin counting ranger to assist with the nightly penguin count for research.

The Koala Conservation: Hang out with our furry friends on our tree top boardwalks and help our visitors spot the koalas amongst the leaves. For a change of scene you can head down to the bush stone-curlew aviaries where this threatened species is paving the way to be released back into the wild on the island.

The Nobbies: Keep an eye out for whales, penguins, seals and birds of prey from our cliff-top boardwalks, or join our Visitors in the Antarctic Journey and share how we can protect our southern oceans.

Churchill Island: Chat with visitors about farming, traditional gardens, and life on the island in the Amess era. Demonstrate historic pastimes such as sketching, water colour painting, knitting or wool spinning to add life and colour to our heritage sites. Volunteers have the choice to wear historically accurate costumes that are provided by the Nature Parks.

Conservation

Help us protect nature for wildlife by getting involved with our conservation and research team.

The Barb Martin Bushbank

Every Wednesday and Thursday the volunteer team joins James our nursery coordinator in propagating native plants for habitat on our Island. Learn propagation skills, how to care for native plants, get your hands dirty, and help keep our nursery in tip top shape! Suitable for a range of abilities, and needs.

Curlew Custodians

Bush stone-curlews were last heard on Phillip island in the 1970s. Now the Curlew Custodians are working with our ranger team to re-introduce these birds to the island. Prior to their release birds are being kept in captivity at the Koala Conservation Reserve. The custodians help with animal husbandry including preparing and delivering food, tidying aviaries, and recording observations for research.

Turn the Tide

Once a month 18 beaches across Phillip Island are surveyed for marine debris by the Turn the Tide team. On the last Saturday of each month the debris is sorted and catalogued so that the data can be entered into the Australian Marine Debris Initiative Database. Volunteers in this team can undertake one or more roles including beach cleaning, debris sorting, and data entry. Data from these beach cleans was used in implementing legislation change to ban the release of balloons in Australia. To make a difference to our marine environments come join us on the beaches!

Eastern Barred Bandicoot Assistants

Once listed as extinct in the wild these adorable marsupials are now thriving on Phillip Island. To monitor this population EBB Assistants head out with our research team quarterly to trap the bandicoots and give them a health check. Assistants are not responsible for handling animals, however they will have the opportunity to help the bandicoot handlers and see these amazing animals up close. As these animals are nocturnal this is a night time activity. This opportunity is by invitation, to be considered you can fill out the eastern barred bandicoot assistant application form. Please note this is a separate application to our standard volunteer roles.

The Hooded Plover Watch

These adorable beach nesting birds need your help to survive! 'Hoodies' are small grey and white birds with black heads and distinctive red beaks and eyes. Each year their breeding season coincides with tourists hitting our beaches, putting their eggs and young at risk. The hooded plover watch helps our ranger team by monitoring the birds and entering the data into the Birdlife Australia portal. Rangers use this data to track the birds, put signs up warning beach goers of their presence, and know when the birds are ready for banding. This opportunity is seasonal and available between October and March each year.

Working Bees

From time to time we have a task that needs many hands! These opportunities are shared with the whole volunteer team and happen as needed. Previous examples have included:

Penguin Box Building - Volunteers built and painted 100 penguin boxes to go to King Island to support the rehabilitation of their colony

Bundle Building - In preparation for conservation work at Cape Woolamai, Volunteers worked with rangers to tie bundles of ti-tree to use in sand dune stabilization

Planting Days - Each year we hold a number of planting days to get our Bushbank plants in the ground and help our habitat.

Other Opportunities

Victorian Collections - Online Volunteering

Our Victorian Collections Catalogue has hundreds of beautiful heritage items from Churchill Island. Volunteers in this role complete a short online training course, and then conduct online research into our different items and write short, historically accurate descriptions to add life and colour to each of the items. Volunteers are supported by Andrea, our museum curator and Helen, the Volunteer Coordinator. In this role volunteers can get started straight away.

Research Assistants

From time to time our research scientists and field officers need a hand in collecting data. This may include conducting rock platform surveys, assisting with shearwater burrow checks, entering data into our databases, or other activities.