The Victorian tourism destination with a completely undeserved reputation

Port Phillip Bay is home to all manner of natural wonders. The frolicking dolphins, playful seals, sandy beaches and vibrant reefs are all well-established natural attractions.

But recently, the low-lying sandy landform known as Mud Islands, about six kilometres north-east of Portsea, has been attracting rave reviews.

For the past year, reviews on Google have lauded the hospitality options and refreshing mud baths. Photos show people covered in mud, seemingly having the time of their lives – an experience not to be missed.

One five-star review posted four months ago featured a photo of a man and a woman neck deep, with mud smeared on their faces, and claimed the mud was “especially deep today”.

Another reviewer said they had hoped to go away for the weekend to Sorrento, but missed the turn-off and ended up on Mud Islands by accident.

“Food, drink and service was phenomenal, only complaint would truthfully be the wildlife, the birds were awfully quiet,” it said.

In reality, there is little truth in any of these reviews. Mud Islands offers none of the tourism infrastructure described. There are no restaurants or cafes offering refreshments for hungry visitors; there is nobody there at all.

Mud Islands, sometimes referred to in the singular in reviews, is actually a marine national park that can only be accessed by boat when the tide is right.

I know this because I went to the effort of visiting, despite knowing these glowing reviews were bogus.

A cursory glance at some of the descriptions was all it took to undermine their veracity. When I did a reverse search of one image of mud bathers, I found it was originally published in 2015 in a Los Angeles Times picture gallery from a mud day in Michigan.

Fully aware I could be the butt of some online in-joke and probably the source of hilarity for a subculture in a youthful corner of the internet, I decided to go to Mud Islands anyway.

My willingness to don a wetsuit and appear in a video might have heightened the comedic effect. And yet, the urge to see it for myself was irrepressible.

I chartered a boat and found my captain in the dreadlocked Duane Clark, who was up for the marine adventure.

Clark, who has run a boating business for six years, said knowledge of the weather, tides and wind changes is crucial for anyone planning a visit to the remote spot.

“You’d want to come here on a high tide and not get yourself into trouble by getting stuck here for too long,” Clark said.

We launched from the boat ramp at St Leonards into the glassy water of Port Phillip Bay. After about 15 minutes at sea, Mud Islands began to reveal itself as a sliver of coastal scrubby green against an overcast backdrop.

After anchoring the boat and completing our journey on stand-up paddleboards through the shallows, Clark confirmed what I could see with my own eyes: no restaurants and not much mud. Or at least none of the kind described in the reviews.

The coastal plant life, however, put on a dazzling display of vivid red and green. It was easy to see why these tiny, sandy islands are listed as a Ramsar site, which means the natural wetlands are considered internationally significant.

Apart from a few scraps of rubbish and a discarded shoe sole, there seemed to be little evidence of recent human visitation.

There are no locals. The place is uninhabited and completely undeveloped. Staying overnight is also prohibited.

But I enjoyed the effort put into the phony reviews’ backstories. One person said they took their wife to Mud Islands for their 10th wedding anniversary and found the locals nice and welcoming, although the place was too busy.

I asked Google’s AI program Gemini about a particular review that described the mud as refreshing, although it had a tendency to “creep into every orifice”.

“It’s meant to sound like a weird, borderline-inappropriate overshare,” Gemini said. “In a real review of a nature reserve, people usually talk about the birds, the boat access, or the sand – not the intrusive nature of the mud on their bodies.”

Gemini’s verdict on this entry on its own company’s website? The review was deliberately misleading.

“It’s a ‘shitpost’ (pardon the pun) designed to be a bit gross and absurd,” Gemini reported. “If you go there expecting a refreshing mud spa, you’ll actually find a very windy, bird-filled sandbank where you’ll likely get your boat stuck.”

Melbourne University professor of political communication, Andrea Carson, said Google’s failure to take down false reviews was a breach of its own policy. She said some of the reviews had thousands of views and may come from overseas.

Carson also noted that the false reviews may be people experimenting with “AI slop” and there was no obvious financial benefit.

“It could be an attempt to attract viewers for scam purposes down the track or just being mischievous,” she said.

When I contacted Google directly and reported the fake reviews, I sent a series of questions to its media department, including whether Google had breached its own policies in allowing the reviews to stay so long.

A spokeswoman said the company had investigated and fixed the matter.

“Our policies clearly state that reviews must be based on real experiences and information,” she said. “If we find fake reviews that violate our policies, we take appropriate action, including removing them.”

When I checked again later, the fake reviews were gone. I was glad to see them removed because it was impossible to believe anything after sifting through and reading their weird descriptions. But I guess that’s the point.

If I hadn’t seen the landform myself, I might have doubted the existence of Mud Islands altogether.

As if we needed another reminder of how much the online world has muddied reality.

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