Cowes is the main township on Phillip Island in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia. The town was originally known as Mussel Rocks. In 1865, a government surveyor Henry Cox returned from a holiday retreat in England. He renamed the town after the seaport town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, England. It is less than 2 hours drive from Melbourne and can also be reached by ferry from Stony Point on the Mornington Peninsula. At the 2006 census, Cowes had a population of 3678.