Alba Thermal Springs: The newest stop in Mornington Peninsula

Find geothermal bathing, heavenly spa treatments and seriously good all-day dining all in one place on Victoria’s bush-fringed coast.

Feeling a bit ‘meh’? Forget travelling overseas to a wellness retreat in a far-flung destination when there’s a way to restore your wellbeing closer to home. Enter Alba Thermal Springs & Spa, Victoria’s newest hot springs, located in the laidback Mornington Peninsula.

Bathing in geothermal springs surrounded by the wild beauty of nature is a centuries-old ritual practised by people all over the world. Sure, soaking in mineral-rich water helps to relieve stress, fatigue and muscle aches, but it also feels damn good to float in a warm pool while watching the clouds above. Add a sublime spa treatment, nourishing lunch (and perhaps a cheeky glass of wine?) and you’ve got yourself a one-way ticket to paradise.

Alba Thermal Springs Forest Pool — Bathe in geothermal springs surrounded by wild beauty.

Diving into Alba Thermal Springs

From the outside, Alba’s sleek, slightly futuristic structure lends itself to being anything from a contemporary art gallery to the headquarters of a tech company. Entering the imposing building, I’m immediately enveloped in a wave of calm as I’m led to the changerooms equipped with lockers, showers and Dyson hairdryers.

After changing into a bikini, I slip on a plush, white robe and venture out into the open-air bathing area to begin the experience. There are only a few pools visible once I walk through the glass doors into the outdoor area but as the adage goes, looks can be deceiving. There are actually 31 therapeutic thermal springs and salt baths dispersed throughout the 15-hectare property’s sloping, landscaped native gardens.

Alba Thermal Springs The Falls pool at night — Day or night, The Falls is a stunning pool to relax in.

With a variety of pools heated to varying temperatures, I pool hop like goldilocks until I find the one that’s just right for me. At first, I join two women chilling out in The Falls, a showstopping pool surrounded by a halo of soft rain. I then wander up the path to try The Shell, a small, semi-enclosed cocoon-like pool with no one else in it. Further along, I find The Luna, a pretty, moon-shaped pool fringed by native bushland.

Alba Thermal Springs hemisphere the hide — Find cave-like pools to hide in.

Importantly, Alba is one of the few places where you can enjoy the freedom to relax in mobile phone-free peace. Prefer some privacy? There are also nine private pools you can book to bathe in seclusion, including an intimate rooftop salt pool for two and a spacious pool and deck perfect for small groups.

But it’s not all about bathing here. I love the endorphin boost that comes with getting hot and sweaty, so I make a beeline for The Hemisphere’s spacious sauna and steam rooms. After melting my muscles in the sauna, I follow up with a cleansing chaser of steam that leaves me with a rosy glow. On the way out, I sidestep a cold plunge pool with just one brave bather in it. One day I’ll work up the courage to try hot/cold immersion therapy, but that day is not today.

woman getting into a pool at Alba Thermal Springs — Choose from 31 therapeutic thermal springs and salt baths.

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Thyme restaurant

Feeling peckish, the thought of leaving to find something to eat is unbearable. Thankfully, there’s no need to change back into the jeans and shirt I arrived in. At Thyme restaurant, wearing a robe and slippers is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged.

The all-day menu (created by award-winning Melbourne chef Karen Martini) features dishes that strike the perfect balance between nutritious and delicious. There’s a focus on light, fresh fare, with menu items like a humble chicken schnitzel sandwich elevated by clever ingredients like seeded panko, slaw, carrot zuni pickle and green chilli mayo.

Sure, you could order a salad or seasonal greens if you’re focused on clean eating, but there are also classic comfort foods like potato frites and gelato (and an impressive wine list of local drops) too. A coconut jelly and crème dessert with salted mango and zesty lime pearls is a real standout in a sea of winners – who knew spa dining could be this good?

crab crumpet at Thyme restaurant — Try the crab crumpet at Thyme.

Relaxing in Alba’s spa

From guided meditation to sauna infusion and qi gong, Alba has plenty of wellness activities on offer. For me, the ultimate wellbeing-booster is a post-lunch massage that’s so relaxing I almost drop off to sleep. Located at the top of a dramatic, oversized spiral staircase, the spa is a haven of tranquillity where staff speaking in hushed tones greet guests with a warm pot of Alba’s signature herbal tea.

Including all-day access to the geothermal pools and a one-hour massage in the spa, the Alba Artisan experience hits the spot for me but there’s everything from vichy showers to cryo facials and deluxe pedicures to choose from. Want to shed your old skin with some serious exfoliation? Try the Hammam Float experience. Feel like you need a total reset? Go all-in and book the Anahata Ritual to enjoy a body polish, clay wrap, scalp treatment, hydrating massage and facial, as well as all-day access to the pools. You won’t know yourself afterwards.

Emerging from the spa, I float downstairs without a care in the world. Turns out, stress doesn’t stand a chance against the rare combination of hot springs, good food and a spa session at Alba Thermal Springs & Spa.

spiral staircase at Alba Thermal Springs — Head up the staircase for the ultimate spa experience.

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The details

You’ll find Alba Thermal Springs & Spa in the Mornington Peninsula town of Fingal, a 90-minute drive south of Melbourne Airport.

No such thing as too much relaxation? Discover the best natural spa baths around Australia.

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 newest hot springs making gentle waves on the Mornington Peninsula

Find geothermal bathing, heavenly spa treatments and seriously good all-day dining all in one place on Victoria’s bush-fringed coast.

Diving into Alba Thermal Springs

Thyme restaurant

Relaxing in Alba’s spa

The details

This abandoned coastal fort in Vic finally unlocked its underground tunnels

7 reasons to book a long weekend on the Mornington Peninsula

This is Mornington Peninsula’s most indulgent itinerary

Mornington Peninsula’s storied past: war, shipwrecks and a runaway convict

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

Find geothermal bathing, heavenly spa treatments and seriously good all-day dining all in one place on Victoria’s bush-fringed coast.

Diving into Alba Thermal Springs

AI Prompt

Thyme restaurant

Relaxing in Alba’s spa

The details

This abandoned coastal fort in Vic finally unlocked its underground tunnels

7 reasons to book a long weekend on the Mornington Peninsula

This is Mornington Peninsula’s most indulgent itinerary

Mornington Peninsula’s storied past: war, shipwrecks and a runaway convict

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