13 of the best things to do in the Grampians

Wondering what are the best things to do in the Grampians? Don’t worry we have you covered with our 13 things you’ll definitely want to see.

Home to some of the most scenic roads in Australia, the Grampians is stuff of road tripping dreams. The iconic route between Dunkeld and Halls Gap, a 65-kilometre stretch of road so spectacular you’ll want to drive it twice because the views are that good, is just the beginning. Follow this list and go a little deeper.

1. Find “Hope" in St Arnaud

The Grampians may be famous for its soaring peaks and amazing views, but one of the region’s best kept secrets is the historic gold mining town St Arnaud and in particular, its Silo and Art Trail . The trail reveals a collection of nine public works by local artist Kyle Torney. Torney’s most arresting work, titled “Hope", spans two silos and reflects the aspirations of the time.

St Arnaud Silo Art, Grampians, VIC, Australia — One of the region’s best-kept secrets is the historic gold mining town of St Arnaud.

2. Be awed by Mad-Dadjug (Mt Abrupt)

When the sandstone ridge of Mad-Dadjug (Mt Abrupt) majestically appears at the end of the road it’s one of the most remarkable – and photogenic – sights on the scenic route through the heart of Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park between Dunkeld and Halls Gap. For truly awesome views, tackle the steep walking track up to the summit. It’s a challenging climb but the rewards are worth the effort.

Road, Mt Abrupt, Grampians, VIC — The remarkable drive towards the equally remarkable Mad-Dadjug (Mt Abrupt). (Image: Grampians Tourism)

3. Chill out at Victoria’s largest waterfall

Standing at the foot of Mikunung wira (MacKenzie Falls), it’s hard to believe that these thundering cascades – the largest in the state, and the only falls in the Grampians that flow all year round – are less than 100 kilometres from a desert. It’s one of the park’s most celebrated attractions, but to really get a sense of all that natural power, follow the walking trail from the lookout down to the pool at the base (be prepared to get doused in the mist). If you don’t fancy tackling the 265 steps, the longer but gentler MacKenzie River Walk is easier on the knees.

Mackenzie Falls, Grampians, VIC, Australia — These are the only falls in the Grampians that flow all year round. (Image: Visit Victoria)

4. Be humbled by ancient creation stories.

The Grampians region has the largest number of rock art sites in southern Australia (more than 80 per cent of Victoria’s First Nations art sites are here). One of the most significant is Bunjils Cave , in the Black Range Scenic Reserve near Stawell, the only known rock art depiction of the spirit Bunjil, who created not only the sandstone ranges of Gariwerd, but all the plants and animals as well. Seeing these ancient galleries in real life is a powerful reminder that this place is home to the oldest living continuous culture in the world.

Indigenous Art, Bunjil, Grampians, VIC, Australia — See the only known rock art depiction of the spirit Bunjil.

5. Get in the picture at Framing the Wimmera

There are plenty of views in the Grampians worth framing, but the vistas in the art installation Framing the Wimmera really are next level. Super-sized frames in four of the most picture-perfect locations across the region – at Mount Arapiles, the Grampians, Toolondo Reservoir and the Wimmera River – make glorious locations for road trip snaps, ready to share. Don’t forget to tag #FramingTheWimmera.

Framing the Wimmera, Grampians, VIC, Australia — Don’t forget to tag #FramingTheWimmera. (Image: Robert Crack)

6. Take a deep dive into the world of olive oil

The Grampians Olive Co is one of the oldest olive groves in Australia. Family run and certified organic, it’s the place to get the good oil on, well, the good oil. Visit the farm, follow the process from tree to bottle, learn how to taste like an olive oil sommelier and stock up on picnic supplies. Need another reason to stop? They also roast their own coffee and serve lunch platters. The mountain views are pretty special too.

The Grampians Olive Co, Olive Groves in Australia — The Grampians Olive Co is one of the oldest olive groves in Australia.

7. Putt your way through the fern forest at Adventure Golf

You don’t have to be an expert golfer to play around at this course, but you will need a sense of adventure. Rated one of the best adventure golf courses in the world, the 18-hole course has no less than four waterfalls and five ponds, plus a few tunnels and other challenges. Surrounded by the wilds of the national park with its own beautiful gardens, it’s family-friendly fun, although the infamous ‘nerve test’ has been known to spark some serious social rivalry.

Mini golf at Adventure, Grampians, VIC, Australia — Beyond golf, there are lots of options for family-friendly fun.

8. Pay your respects to the father of football

Here’s something most folks don’t know: Australian rules football was born in Moyston! Cricketing superstar, Thomas Wentworth Wills, who in 1858 co-founded and captained one of the oldest professional sporting clubs in the world, Melbourne Football Club, grew up at Lexington Station, near Moyston. Inspired by the games he played with local Indigenous kids as a child, he helped develop the rules of the game we now call Aussie Rules as a way for cricketers to keep fit in winter.There’s a monument to the sporting great in Moyston, and the gazebo behind it features a six-sided history of the game. It’s one of the stops on the East Grampians Scenic Route .

Tom Wills Memorial, Moyston, Grampians, VIC, Australia — Australian rules football was born in Moyston!

9. Take a tour of one of the longest underground wine cellar in the world

Ever wondered how much space you’d need to keep three million bottles of wine? The answer is heaps. A cellar three kilometres long, at least. Seppelt Great Western is home to the longest and largest underground wine cellar in the southern hemisphere and can hold three millions bottles of bubbly. Dug by out-of-work gold miners in the 1860s, the labyrinth of tunnels known as ‘drives’ took more than 60 years to build. The daily tours include a tasting of the region’s famous sparkling shiraz, first made back in 1890.

Seppelt Great Western Old Cellar, Grampians, VIC, Australia — Seppelt Great Western is home to the longest and largest underground wine cellar in the southern hemisphere

10. Climb a volcano and peer into a bottomless lake

Something else most people don’t know is that the southern Grampians sit atop the third largest volcanic plain in the world. Take a drive along Mt Rouse Tourist Road near Penshurst and stop at Crater Lake on the way to the top – it was once believed to be bottomless. Follow the walking track up to a viewing platform and stairs to the summit of the now dormant volcano, where you’ll find extraordinary 360-degree views of the lava plain and neighbouring volcanoes Budj Bim (Mt Eccles) and Mt Napier. Learn more about the amazing history of the region at the Volcanoes Discovery Centre in Penshurst.

Mount Rouse, Crater Lake, Grampians, VIC, Australia — Take a drive along Mt Rouse Tourist Road near Penshurst and stop at Crater Lake on the way to the top. (Image: Robert Crack)

11. Take a walk on the dark side in Ararat

Delve into Victoria’s dark underbelly on a guided tour of J Ward , Ararat’s Old Gaol and Lunatic Asylum . Built as a goldfields prison in 1859, it became home for the criminally insane once the gold ran out, incarcerating some of the most depraved, desperate and dangerous men in the state. It’s not for the squeamish or easily spooked, as you’ll be chilled by the stories of murderers, ghosts and the rather barbaric treatments for mental illness in the past. It’s proof that real life can be stranger than fiction – and even darker than your favourite Friday night TV crime show.

J Ward, Street view, Grampians, VIC, Australia — Delve into Victoria’s dark underbelly on a guided tour of J Ward.

12. Give the big koala a big hug

We all know it’s not a real Aussie road trip without snapping a selfie with a big thing, and big things don’t come more Instagrammable than the giant koala at Dadswells Bridge, roughly halfway between Stawell and Horsham. Standing 14 metres high and weighing in at a whopping 12 tonnes, Sam – named in honour of a real life koala rescued from the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 – even has his own hashtag. If you really want to impress your friends, pick up a t-shirt while you’re there: there’s a gift shop in his belly.

13. Marvel at a giant shed made of sticks

Not just any shed, the Murtoa Stick Shed is simply marvellous. Built in 1942 as an emergency grain store – the only Second World War emergency store still standing – it’s made of hundreds of hand-hewn poles of mountain ash (big sticks). It feels more like a cathedral than a silo, with its vast gabled interior and long rows of poles casting ethereal shadows. Part of the 200-kilometre Silo Art Trail – soon to become Australia’s biggest outdoor art gallery – you’ll never see anything else like it.

Murtoa Stick Shed, Grampians, VIC, Australia — Built in 1942 as an emergency grain store, Not just any shed, the Murtoa Stick Shed is simply marvellous.

Plan your Grampians road trip at visitgrampians.com.au .

Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park — The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd — Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain — Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

wildflowers in Grampians National Park — Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola — Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

dining at Pomonal Estate — Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

Salingers of Great Western — Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

Kookaburras on a tree — Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .

Playing there

abseiling down Hollow Mountain — Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors . Visit Wama , Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium .

Eating there

steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate . Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock , can’t be beat.

Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park — The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe . Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines , Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines .

two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.