The Ultimate Two-Day Echuca Moama Itinerary For Families

Couples can steal a romantic getaway, solo travellers can embrace the wild, but it’s with families that this riverside region truly thrives.

Disneyland isn’t the only place made for family fun: two little river towns straddling Victoria and New South Wales are doing just as good at providing lifelong memories for the whole gang – and on a fraction of the budget, too. Don’t believe us? Keep reading and let our two-day family itinerary in Echuca Moama show off the smorgasbord of activities on offer. We bet you’ll end up having just as much fun as the kids.

In short

Echuca Moama is jam-packed with family activities, but in a world of ever-shortening attention spans, we have to commend TwistED Science for keeping even the fidgetiest kids entertained and curious for hours on end.

Day one

Morning

horse riding at Billabong Ranch, Echuca Moama — Billabong Ranch hosts horse riding experiences for families. (Image: Visit Victoria)

Echuca Moama’s many holiday parks – a play-filled world unto themselves – are perfect for giving little ones the chance to make friends (while giving parents a chance to catch their breath). Wake up in a riverside cabin and head to Johnny and Lyle’s for a breakfast of champions; they even have outdoor sand pits, in case they get bored of their pancakes. Then it’s off to Billabong Ranch , which we might argue has too much to do. Strap in for a gentle pony ride, race around the islands of its pedal boat dam in your own little vessel, scale the 30-metre-long climbing wall or pop balloons at the indoor archery range.

Midday

sweet treats on display inside Echuca Heritage Sweet Co. — Echuca Heritage Sweet Co. is worth a stop for kids and the young at heart who have a sweet tooth.

For most kids, you can’t get a dreamier afternoon than a trip to McDonald’s and the local lolly shop – luckily, Echuca’s high street has both, with a particularly fine example of the latter: Echuca Heritage Sweet Co . is nothing short of a town legend. After everyone’s fed and watered, it’s off for a hike through the towering gum trees starting at the Kerrabee Sound Shell and ending in a splash around at Moama Beach, a sandy bank that passes under the mighty bridge linking Victoria and New South Wales. Locals will tell you that the water, while famously brown-ish, is crystal clear and swimmable, with the colouration derived from the river bank, not the water quality. You’ll also spot a BBQ area, in case a riverside picnic is calling. Nearby, the Moama Adventure Play Park is a mini-kingdom of equipment, which makes for a neat 30 minutes of play before dinner.

Evening

the EMBR signage in Echuca Moama — Step into Embr for authentic Italian bites.

The new Wildergreen precinct, hiding in plain sight within Moama’s Bowling Club , has pulled off the impossible: an upscale dining destination that’s also tailored to families. Its flagship Italian restaurant, Embr , has the most moreish pizzas and slurpable pastas, with a side serving of Enzo the cartoon fox. Better yet, a sprawling playground full of slides and trampolines sits right outside, as does Wildergreen’s top-tier kids’ club, Treehouse , with the towering sculptural tree at its heart. After dark, join a spooky, lantern-lit tour of the Old Port of Echuca, where theatrical ghost stories and fascinating town history come to life on Wednesday and Saturday nights.

Day two

Morning

a couple buying veggies at one of the stalls in Echuca Farmers Market — Shop farm-fresh produce at Echuca Farmers Market. (Image: Timothy Harley)

This time, we’ll have breakfast over in Moama – 3 Black Sheep lays on cracking dishes, great coffee and long tables for big groups. Plus, it has a sprawling lawn so the young ones can burn off some steam. A 30-minute bus ride or 10-minute car journey away is TwistED Science , where you should be prepared to lose hours on its legion of interactive exhibits – from paper-plane catapults to Lego walls, reptile petting sessions, climbing walls and more engrossingly bonkers bits and pieces than we can name. If you’re here on a Saturday, do your best to make time for a trip to the nearby Echuca Farmers Market , purveyors of local treats.

Midday

kayaking on Murray River — Go kayaking on the ancient Murray River. (Image: Visit Victoria)

Once you’ve had lunch at whichever local eatery has best caught your eye – Hammond Bakery whips up some cracking takeaway options – there’s only one thing to do with a sprawling, sunny afternoon – and that’s get on the river. But this time, we’re leaving the paddle steamers to the history enthusiasts and jumping over to Jess and the team at Echuca Moama Stand Up Paddle SUP for some splashy fun. Most tours take you down about 4–4.5 kilometres of river, where you’ll paddle downstream and attempt to stay upright, lest you join the fishes in the river. If kayaks and canoes are more your thing, head to Echuca Boat & Canoe Hire , which happily supplies both.

Evening

the Rich River Golf Club from above — Home to two 18-hole championship golf courses, the Rich River Golf Club is a dream for golfers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

If you’ve got adventurous palettes on your hands, Monkee and Co serves up the town’s finest Asian hawker-style fare – everything from pork soup dumplings to pork bánh mì sandwiches, beef short rib curries to popcorn chicken with chilli salt. And while you’ll notice they have a delectable dessert menu, this isn’t the place for dessert. No, save your sugar fix for the town’s famous gelateria, The Port Ice Creamery , which serves colourful scoops and shakes until 10pm. Should you still have juice in the tank, there are plenty of places to keep the fun going. Our favourite? The Rich River Golf Club which, also open until 10pm, has an 18-hole mini golf course that’ll see a healthy dose of family rivalry wrap up the trip.

Discover the best restaurants in Echuca Moama

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.

The ultimate two-day Echuca Moama itinerary for families

Couples can steal a romantic getaway, solo travellers can embrace the wild, but it’s with families that this riverside region truly thrives.

In short

Day one

Morning

Midday

Evening

Day two

Morning

Midday

Evening

Follow the White Rabbit to The Murray’s new 2.5-km Sand Sculpture Trail

Australia’s first 5-star overnight paddle steamer is coming to the Murray

The best cafes, restaurants and bars in Echuca Moama

The best accommodation for a comfortable stay in Echuca Moama

This scenic Victorian region is the perfect antidote to city life

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.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Playing there

Eating there