{"id":74514,"date":"2026-08-18T05:56:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T05:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/74514\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T05:56:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T05:56:28","slug":"fatal-crash-at-san-remo-closes-road-to-phillip-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/74514\/","title":{"rendered":"Fatal crash at San Remo closes road to Phillip Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fatal collision at San Remo in Victoria’s south-east has left the popular tourist destination of Phillip Island cut off from the mainland.<\/p>\n

Authorities were called to reports of a collision between a motorcycle and a car on Phillip Island Road about 6:20am.<\/p>\n

Police said the motorcyclist received CPR, but died at the scene.<\/p>\n

The driver of the car stopped and was uninjured.<\/p>\n

Phillip Island Road is the only road to San Remo and Phillip Island.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Police remain at the scene of the crash. (Supplied: Hayley Brebner)<\/p>\n

It is closed in both directions.<\/p>\n

CFA firefighters helped at the scene.<\/p>\n

Phillip Island is home to Victoria’s largest little penguin colony.<\/p>\n

It attracts thousands of tourists each year for its nightly penguin parade.<\/p>\n

\"Four<\/p>\n

The Phillip Island colony is one of the largest in the world. (Supplied: Phillip Island Nature Parks)<\/p>\n

School affected<\/p>\n

Newhaven College on Phillip Island cancelled all buses travelling beyond San Remo because of the road closure.<\/p>\n

Delays are expected to last up to four hours.<\/p>\n

The school said buses that had already departed have turned around and dropped students back at their usual bus stops.<\/p>\n

The school remains open for students and staff who live on Phillip Island and can safely access the college, while staff who live beyond San Remo have been told to stay home.<\/p>\n

Phillip Island quiet<\/p>\n

Phillip Island mother Hayley Brebner told ABC Gippsland Breakfast the crash left the island’s main road unusually quiet, with traffic unable to get through.<\/p>\n

“It’s probably a bit more of a ghost town on our main road this morning as there’s no traffic obviously coming past that Punch Bowl [Road] accident,” Ms Brebner said.\"A<\/p>\n

Traffic on Punchbowl Road has been backed up for several hours. (Supplied: Hayley Brebner)<\/p>\n

She said the difference was particularly noticeable during school drop-off, with the roads normally carrying significant traffic.<\/p>\n

“So you can certainly see that it’s not your normal school drop-off morning of everybody using that sort of main road,” Ms Brebner said.<\/p>\n

“So definitely much quieter.”<\/p>\n

She said major crashes, road closures and events could have a significant impact on the island, with locals sometimes stuck in traffic for hours.<\/p>\n

“There’s many times throughout the year if there is a major accident like we’re experiencing this morning or a road closure or something, we certainly notice with traffic \u2026 we can be locked in traffic for sometimes hours,” Ms Brebner said.<\/p>\n

“So we do tend to try and plan our lives around whether we approach that main road at all.”<\/p>\n

Social media key communication tool<\/p>\n

Amanda Keilar lives near the crash site and first heard about the incident through an emergency alert and local community pages.<\/p>\n

A friend who was caught in the traffic also contacted her after being turned around by police.<\/p>\n

“She was stuck in the traffic and I rang her and she said the police came along and turned her around and said the road would be closed for hours,” Ms Keilar said.<\/p>\n

From her home, Ms Keilar had been watching traffic, including school buses and tradies, being turned around.<\/p>\n

“We’re seeing the same vehicle go up and the same vehicle come back,” she said.<\/p>\n

Island cut off<\/p>\n

Garrey Dove, who runs the Phillip Island Traffic Check 2.0 Facebook page, has been monitoring reports from residents following the crash.<\/p>\n

“At the moment, they’re actually reporting that they can’t get on [Phillip Island], kids can’t get on and kids can’t get off [the Island] for other schools,” Mr Dove said.<\/p>\n

Residents use the page to share traffic information, particularly when major incidents disrupt access to the island.<\/p>\n

“It’s a lot more over the holiday periods, but then things like this, which do happen on occasion, it does get very busy,” he said.<\/p>\n

“And having to wake up to this and … check the page and go, ‘Hang on! What have people written already that I haven’t seen?'” Mr Dove said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fatal collision at San Remo in Victoria’s south-east has left the popular tourist destination of Phillip Island…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10761,22,21,108238,108237],"class_list":["post-74514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-accident","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-crash-between-motorcycle-and-a-car","tag-phillip-island-road"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}