Melbourne’s hills and wine country in one day. The morning starts with wild kangaroos at Lysterfield Park, then the 1000 Steps, the Puffing Billy steam train and the gardens of Sherbrooke and Olinda.
Down in the Yarra Valley the guide goes from cellar door to cellar door — Yering Station, where the first vines in Victoria were planted, Dame Nellie Melba’s Coombe, Domaine Chandon — and on to Healesville Sanctuary, the mountain ash of the Black Spur and Yarra Glen, with where to park at every stop. Home past Sugarloaf Reservoir, where the kangaroos come out in the evening.
Every place on the map
Each red dot is a place with its own story. The story starts by itself when you reach it — on foot, by bike or by car.
All 34 places in this guide
Here is every place the guide tells you about, with the first line of its story:
- Lysterfield Park - wild kangaroos — Lysterfield Park. If you want to see wild kangaroos on a day out from Melbourne, start here.
- 1000 Steps - Kokoda Track Memorial Walk — The 1000 Steps. Officially this is the Kokoda Track Memorial Walk, and Parks Victoria calls it probably Melbourne's most popular bushwalk.
- Puffing Billy Railway, Belgrave — Puffing Billy. At Belgrave, at the very end of Melbourne's suburban train line, a little narrow-gauge steam railway sets off into the forest.
- Alfred Nicholas Memorial Garden, Sherbrooke — Alfred Nicholas Memorial Garden. Thirteen hectares of terraces, stone walls, exotic trees and water spilling down a steep gully: a garden of the 1930s, paid for by a headache tablet.
- Sassafras and Miss Marple's Tearoom — Sassafras. A village strung along the Mount Dandenong Tourist Road, with tearooms, antique shops, toy shops and plant nurseries, and fewer than a thousand people living here.
- R.J. Hamer Arboretum, Olinda — The R.J. Hamer Arboretum. About a hundred hectares of hillside planted with more than a hundred and fifty kinds of trees, native and exotic, and one of the finest views in the Dandenongs that you can drive right up to.
- Cloudehill Gardens, Olinda — Cloudehill. A garden of about two hectares, five hundred and eighty metres up on volcanic soil, made in our own time on the bones of an old nursery.
- Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden, Olinda — The Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden. For most of its life this was the National Rhododendron Garden, and in spring it is still the biggest burst of colour in the hills: more than fifteen thousand rhododendrons, twelve thousand azaleas…
- William Ricketts Sanctuary — In a fern gully under mountain ash, dozens of clay faces and figures of Aboriginal people rise out of the rocks and tree roots, half-hidden in the forest.
- SkyHigh Mount Dandenong — The summit of Mount Dandenong, six hundred and thirty-three metres, is the highest point of the ranges, and on a clear day the whole of Melbourne is laid out below: the towers of the city, Port Phillip Bay beyond…
- Helen's Hill Estate — The first cellar door of the day sits on a rise at the edge of Coldstream, and its name is a courtesy to the past.
- Coombe Yarra Valley - Dame Nellie Melba's estate — Coombe, the Melba estate. Behind the long cypress hedge at the corner of the Maroondah and Melba Highways is the Australian home of Dame Nellie Melba, Australia's most famous opera singer, and it still belongs to her family.
- Yering Farm Wines — Yering Farm. A family farm first and a winery second, and proud of that order: the Johns family had been orchardists and farmers for five generations before any of them made wine.
- Yarra Valley Dairy — The cheese shop here is a milking shed about a hundred years old, and its best-known cheese is one that many Australians have eaten without knowing where it began.
- Yering Station and Chateau Yering — This is where the story of Victorian wine begins, told at one stop: the winery and the old homestead stand about two hundred metres apart on the Melba Highway.
- Domaine Chandon — Domaine Chandon, now known simply as Chandon. This is the Australian estate of the Champagne house Moët & Chandon, and James Halliday calls it one of the two most important wineries in the Yarra Valley.
- Helen & Joey Estate — This is one of the newest family stories in the valley, and perhaps the most unlikely.
- Oakridge Wines — The landmark here is the red box: a bright red block cantilevered over a long, low glass building.
- Dominique Portet — A winemaker from Bordeaux went looking for a cool climate in Australia, and settled in a place actually called Coldstream.
- Rochford Wines — This is the winery with a concert stage. Rochford has an outdoor amphitheatre for twelve thousand people, and it calls itself the home of live music in the Yarra Valley, with more than twenty years of summer concerts behind…
- Soumah of Yarra Valley — Soumah. The turn-off is Hill Road, at the Rochford corner, and the winery is about two kilometres in, along Hill Road, Skye Road and Hexham Road.
- Levantine Hill Estate — Levantine Hill. The building of sweeping curves and vaulted ceilings is the cellar door and restaurant, finished in 2015; inside, the tasting booths are shaped like wine barrels.
- TarraWarra Estate and Museum of Art — TarraWarra Estate and TarraWarra Museum of Art. One estate, two reasons to stop: a winery among the vines, and, on the crest of the hill, a public museum of Australian art.
- Four Pillars Gin Distillery, Healesville — Four Pillars Gin. This distillery, in an old timber yard on the edge of Healesville, started with a late-night text message.
- Healesville Sanctuary — If there is one place on this trip to meet Australian animals up close, it is this one: bushland along Coranderrk Creek at Badger Creek, run by Zoos Victoria, the same organisation as Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open…
- Maroondah Reservoir Park — On the edge of Healesville, Melbourne built part of its water supply as a garden.
- Black Spur Drive — This is the stretch of the Maroondah Highway between Healesville and Narbethong where the road climbs through a forest of mountain ash, with tree ferns packed into the gullies beneath, and it is one of the most famous…
- Yarra Valley Chocolaterie & Ice Creamery — Yarra Valley Chocolaterie and Ice Creamery. This is the stop for anyone in the car who has had enough of wine, and one of the busiest places in the whole valley.
- Alowyn Gardens — Seven acres of garden on the Melba Highway, made by two people, most of it at weekends.
- Balgownie Estate — The name comes from Bendigo, in central Victoria, and it carries one of the founding stories of modern Victorian wine.
- De Bortoli Yarra Valley — De Bortoli is one of the great family names of Australian wine, and this estate at Dixons Creek is the chapter in which a family known for wine made in bulk came to the Yarra Valley and won its respect.
- Yileena Park — A small vineyard on Steels Creek Road with an unusual rule: its red wines are never sold young.
- Yarra Glen and the Grand Hotel — Yarra Glen. Until the railway came, this place was Yarra Flats, named for the river flats around it, and its first hotel, the Yarra Flats Hotel, opened in 1864 for the traffic heading to the goldfields.
- Sugarloaf Reservoir Park - wild kangaroos — Sugarloaf Reservoir Park. The last stop of the day, and the best chance of the day to see wild kangaroos.
Between the places: podcasts
The guide does not fall silent between the places. In the gaps it plays podcasts about Australia — more than 12 hours in this guide: the history of the city and the country, the people, the animals and nature, and life in Australia today. You can listen to them on their own too, before the trip or on the way.
Get the full guide
Access is sold by time, not by tour. One pass opens every guide we have — Sydney, the Sydney Light Rail, the Blue Mountains, the Hunter Valley, Melbourne, the City Circle tram, the Great Ocean Road and the Dandenongs with the Yarra Valley — in English and in Russian. The time starts when you first open your link.
↓ Tap a price to pay — every pass opens every guide
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Free without signing up: the map, 5 places and 5 minutes of the podcast. The full audio unlocks from A$35.
Runs in the browser of your phone, nothing to install. For playing with the screen off there is the app: App Store · Google Play.
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By Andrew Sorokin, Sydney guide since 2006.