Victoria’s dream coastal road trip: Melbourne to Lakes Entrance

Heading to Mallacoota? Take a road trip detour to discover these special spots along the way.

Golden sandy beaches that stretch forever, ferny forests, fabulous food, amazing wildlife and some of the most spectacular coastal scenery in the country are all par for the course on this epic coastal road trip between Melbourne and Mallacoota. As far as road trips go, they don’t get any better than this.

Wilsons Promontory (226km from Melbourne)

There are a hundred good reasons why Wilsons Promontory (aka The Prom) is Victoria’s favourite national park– family-friendly camping and cosy cabins, wild walks, granite peaks, secluded beaches, wildflowers, wombats and whales leap to mind– but for sheer wow factor, take the 5.5-hour Wilsons Promontory Ultimate Day Cruise with Wanderer Adventures .

Wilsons Promontory, Coastal Views, VIC, Australia — The Prom is Victoria’s favourite national park.

A highlight is a visit to Skull Rock (officially it’s called Cleft Island, but it’s spookily shaped like a 60-metre-high bird’s skull and looks like it’s come straight out of a James Bond movie). Wildly inaccessible, it’s been explored by fewer people (nine) than have walked on the moon (12). Oh, and expect to see plenty of birds and, if you’re lucky, a whale or two along the way.

Skull Rock, Wilsons Promontory, VIC, Australia — A highlight is a visit to the spookily shaped Skull Rock.

On the way:

Stop for a spot of shopping in the galleries and art studios of Fish Creek . The art deco pub does great lunches – you can’t miss it, there’s a giant mullet on the roof.

Stay:

Tidal River Wilderness Retreat

Wilsons Promontory, Gippsland, VIC, Australia — Exploring ‘The Prom’ is always a good idea.

Tinamba (200km from the Prom)

Tina-where? This tiny Central Gippsland dairy town of 500 or so is worth the detour because it’s home to one of Gippsland’s best dining destinations. Tinamba Hotel has won a swag of awards including Pub of the Year, Best Regional Restaurant and a coveted Chef Hat in the 2022 Australian Good Food Guide Awards. Almost everything on the menu is locally grown, caught or made, including the wine: think Gippsland jersey ricotta and beef, blue-eye trevalla, Snowy River black garlic and Windsong Farm honey. It’s open for lunch and dinner Wednesday through to Saturday, and Sunday lunch – book ahead.

Tinamba Hotel Exterior, VIC, Australia — The Tinamba Hotel has been recognized with multiple awards.

On the way:

Stretch your legs on the magical Tarra Valley Rainforest Walk though ferny glens and glades to Cyathea Falls in Tarra Bulga National Park.

Stay:

The Ret reat at Mewburn Park Homestead , Maffra

Tinamba Hotel Pink Lemonade Macaron, VIC, Australia — Foodies absolutely need to try the food at Tinamba Hotel.

Paynesville (80km from Tinamba)

Time to face the water. Perfectly positioned in the middle of one of the largest expanses of inland waterways in the country, pretty Paynesville is the type of place you’ll never want to leave, so think about spending an extra day or two. Hop aboard the free ferry to Raymond Island and wander through the koala colony – sightings are pretty much guaranteed. Take a long walk on Ninety Mile Beach (maybe not the whole way), then treat yourself to a long lunch at Sardine Dining, where Mark Briggs, the former head chef of Vue de monde, transforms the catch of the day into something truly memorable.

Captains Cove, Paynesville, Gippsland, VIC — You will never want to leave Paynesville.

On the way:

You’re on Gunaikurnai land, so visit Krowathunkoolong Keeping Place in Bairnsdale to uncover 30,000 years of culture.

Stay:

Captains Cove Waterfront Apartments , Paynesville

Sardine Dining, Paynesville, VIC, Australia — Treat yourself to a long lunch at Sardine Dining.

Metung (44km from Paynesville)

As the crow flies (or boat glides) it’s fewer than a dozen kilometres across the lake to Metung . By road it’s about 40 minutes, a lovely drive beside the Tambo River. Sleepy and laid-back, the good life here is all about strolling on boardwalks, maybe dropping a fishing line from a jetty, and definitely enjoying wraparound water views from one of the many restaurants in town – those at the Metung Hotel overlooking Bancroft Bay are hard to beat. It won’t be long before the opening of Metung Hot Springs will make getting wet in winter something to really look forward to.

Sunset View of Metung Jetties, Gippsland, VIC, Australia — Drop a fishing line from a jetty in Metung.

On the way:

Take the long way there and head up into the hills to Bruthen , where you’ll find a brewery, wineries, galleries, antique shops and a cracker of a rail trail.

Stay:

Lakeview Retreat , Metung

Soaking in tubs, Metung Hot Springs, Gippsland, VIC — Soak in the views at the Metung Hot Springs, Gippsland. (Image: Rikki-Jo Molinaro)

Lakes Entrance (20km from Metung)

If you’ve been doing this road trip right you’ll be well into the rhythm of things by now, and 20 kilometres in a day is more than enough when the scenery is this good. Lakes Entrance might be best known for its watery wonders – it’s the largest lake system in the southern hemisphere – but it’s even better in cooler weather, when you can curl up beside a roaring fireplace in a cosy retreat or restaurant with a glass of something local, admiring the water views from the inside out. Try a local craft beer at The Slipway before tucking into some very special seafood at Sodafish .

Octopus, Sodafish, Lakes Entrance, VIC — Fresh seafood on the balcony at Sodafish, Lakes Entrance.

On the way:

If you’re road tripping in winter, take a detour west along the Great Alpine Road . From surfing Gippsland to skiing Mt Hotham in a day, it doesn’t get much cooler than that.

Stay:

Lakes Entrance Waverley House Cottages

Aerial view, Lakes Entrance, Australia — See Lakes Entrance from above.

Marlo (72km from Lakes Entrance)

If you can find a place more relaxed than Marlo , where the famous Snowy River seeps into the sea, we’d really like to know about it. Follow the Snowy River Estuary Walk from the centre of town to Mots Beach; Brad Farmer, Tourism Australia’s beach ambassador, reckons it’s one of Australia’s top 20 beaches of 2022. Just make sure you’re back before dark, because the sunset view from the verandah of the Marlo Pub is a knockout. They’ve been serving cold drinks since 1886 and we can vouch for the Lakes Entrance flathead tacos.

Corringle Slips, Marlo Beach, Gippsland, VIC, Australia — Visit one of Australia’s best beaches.

On the way:

Take a side trip into the hills and down into an underground wonderland at Buchan Caves .

Stay:

Marlo Caravan Park & Motel

The Captain, Marlo, VIC, Australia — There’s no better place to relax than in Marlo.

Mallacoota (146km from Marlo)

It might be the end of the road on this epic coastal road trip, but as far as endings go it’s a happy one. Surrounded by Croajingolong National Park , Mallacoota really is a secluded paradise. What’s not to love about a place that combines wild beaches, expansive lakes, forested wilderness and fabulous seafood? And don’t leave town without sampling the dumplings and hand-made noodles from Lucy’s. Walk, kayak, cruise or pedal; there are so many ways to explore this beautiful place.

Rising canoes and kayaks, Mallacoota, Gippsland, Australia — There are so many ways to explore this beautiful place.

On the way:

Take a short side trip out to Cape Conran on the coast. You can marvel at wildflowers blooming in the banksia forests that have re-grown since the 2020 bushfires, and explore the rock pools and deserted beaches.

Stay:

Karbeethong Lodge , Mallacoota

Afternoon Jetty fishing, Mallacoota, Gippsland, VIC — Mallacoota, it doesn’t get much more idyllic.

Plan your dream coastal road trip at visitgippsland.com.au/do-and-see/drives.

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.

Victoria’s dream coastal road trip: Melbourne to Lakes Entrance

Heading to Mallacoota? Take a road trip detour to discover these special spots along the way.

Wilsons Promontory (226km from Melbourne)

On the way:

Stay:

Tinamba (200km from the Prom)

On the way:

Stay:

Paynesville (80km from Tinamba)

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Stay:

Metung (44km from Paynesville)

On the way:

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Lakes Entrance (20km from Metung)

On the way:

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Marlo (72km from Lakes Entrance)

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Mallacoota (146km from Marlo)

On the way:

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Plan your dream coastal road trip at visitgippsland.com.au/do-and-see/drives.

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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