We completed this itinerary from March to April 2026. While documenting it, I also wanted to share with everyone how we thought about a trip like this, along with its pros and cons.
Why Melbourne This Time?
The reason was actually pretty personal and didn’t have that much to do with Melbourne itself.
Mainly because we’d already been to several of Australia’s major cities, like Brisbane and Sydney on the east coast, and Perth on the west coast. We really do love Australia, and Australia is just so big. The north (such as the Great Barrier Reef region) and the central desert area (Alice Springs) are relatively harder to reach, so we ended up choosing a destination that was easier to get to first, and that became Melbourne.
Of course, the way you visit a place shapes your impression of it.
As people who love the countryside and dislike city-heavy itineraries, we still liked Brisbane’s urban character quite a lot, and absolutely loved Perth’s almost-empty chill vibe even within the city itself. This time, though, almost everything on the itinerary was outside the city. Compared with the city proper, Melbourne was really just the starting point and ending point of the trip.
Before setting off, we expected this trip would include:
- Lots of wildlife watching in natural settings (wombats, emus, koalas)
- Two coastlines, three mountains, and all the rich, beautiful scenery that comes with them
- Interesting walking trails
That’s also why this kind of trip works so well in a motorhome:
Most of the sights are outdoors, and your accommodation moves with the attractions. Hotels aren’t necessarily convenient, while a camping setup can actually make the whole trip easier.
After Sorting It All Out: The Three Main Highlights Around Greater Melbourne
Wilsons Promontory National Park
This spot lies southeast of Melbourne and is about as far south as you can go. Once you cross the strait, Tasmania is on the other side.
Maybe it’s precisely because it’s so far away that it has managed to keep its natural character so well. Driving there from greater Melbourne, you really feel like you’re leaving the city behind and heading into the countryside.
Here, the things I expected to do included:
- Wombats: one of Australia’s signature animals. They have the body shape of a small bear, short legs, a square butt, and square poop, and the way they walk is genuinely adorable. If you really want the highest chance of spotting wombats, Tasmania is probably the top place. But Wilsons Promontory is the closest point to Tasmania on the mainland. At the park’s only camping accommodation, Tidal River Campground, you have a chance of seeing them right on the grass, and we did see them this time.
- Scenery and hiking trails. The view from Mt Oberon is comparable to the Glass House Mountains (internal link). But maybe that’s just Australia, with grand mountain-and-water scenery everywhere. There are also smaller fun spots, like Squeaky Beach.
Great Ocean Road
The Great Ocean Road is a classic travel route. It’s long enough to make it especially beloved for road trips. Along the way, you see all kinds of road-trippers in touring cars, motorhomes, motorcycles, and big bikes.
I’d roughly divide the Great Ocean Road into an eastern side and a western side, and we drove it from east to west.
- Eastern coastline: a road carved along the coast, with cliffs right beside you. In concept, it’s a bit like Taiwan’s Qingshui Cliffs on the east coast, just much longer and more extensive.
- Western coastline: huge rocks, unusual landforms, and all kinds of oddly shaped stone formations. This is where the Twelve Apostles are.
- Wild koalas: this was the stretch where we found wild koalas. You can also see my other post, Looking for Wild Koalas in Australia: Spots to Observe Them Along Melbourne’s Great Ocean Road.
Grampians National Park / Halls Gap
There doesn’t seem to be that much information about this national park in Chinese-language travel circles.
But the days we visited happened to be Easter, and the entire park was absolutely packed. It really looked like a standard holiday park destination west of Melbourne for locals.
- Hiking: there are lots of different trails here, and many of them are genuinely fun. If you have enough time, you can choose a full loop, but at the time we just took one of the shortcut routes uphill. The Pinnacle Trail doesn’t require any hand-over-hand scrambling, but it’s a very three-dimensional route, with narrow passages, side sections, piled rocks, and so on. It’s a very enjoyable trail to walk.
- Scenic lookouts: there are two lookouts, Boroka Lookout and Reed Lookout, and you can drive straight to both of them, which greatly reduces the need for extra climbing.
Itinerary Planning
Taiwan’s Long Holiday Weekend
This trip spanned Taiwan’s Tomb-Sweeping Day holiday from April 3 to April 6, plus the week before that, when we took four days off. Including flights, it was a 10-day trip; excluding flights, it was designed as 8 days on the ground.
If you want enough time to settle in and travel slowly, Australia probably really does require a slightly longer trip. The one thing you can try to save is avoiding a transfer via Singapore if possible. We’ve written separately about whether you should transit through Singapore on the way to Australia (internal link).
Australia’s Easter Holiday
If I could choose again, I would definitely say this: if you can avoid this holiday period, avoid it.
In 2026, Easter fell from April 3 to April 6. Unfortunately, that lined up exactly with Taiwan’s Tomb-Sweeping Day long weekend.
We didn’t notice this when we bought our flights. It wasn’t until three or four months before departure, when we started planning campsites, that we realized places were already almost fully booked for that period. Caught between not being able to book and having to compromise, we tried hard and in the end had to choose an unpowered campsite for the final night.
In practice, Easter really did affect us a little during those days.
One issue was Good Friday, when all the supermarkets were closed. We genuinely hesitated that day, wondering what our next meal was going to be. We had originally planned to buy supplies that day, but because everything was shut, we couldn’t, and it ended up delaying our packing schedule a bit.
Also, the campsites during those few days were truly overflowing with people. They were so full that even the marked camping spaces inside the park weren’t enough, and operators had cordoned off a huge extra area outside and basically said, just pitch your tents wherever, XD. You could really tell this was peak season for locals.
Of course, there were happy people everywhere, sitting around campfires, singing and chatting. It did create a lovely feeling of celebrating the holiday alongside them. But if I had the choice, I’d still try to avoid it, because the extra cost of the crowds, like queueing time, peak-season prices, and so on, is pretty high.
Easter is not fixed on the same date every year.
If I’m planning another April trip in the future, I need to remember to avoid the Easter holiday period.
Climate Analysis
We went during the seasonal transition when Melbourne was shifting from summer into autumn.
Overall Climate
According to statistics from Weather Spark,
- The best time to travel to Melbourne is from January to March, which is their summer. This is also the period with the best weather and the lowest chance of rain.
- Winter, meaning June, July, and August, is the time when the weather is most noticeably rougher, rain is more likely, and temperatures are at their coldest.
As we’ve mentioned before, whether or not you run into rain is ultimately just a matter of probability beforehand. All we can do is choose the most suitable odds in advance as best we can.
But in the moment, when you’ve come all that way and the weather turns bad, that reality is still very real.
We were very lucky on this trip and almost never ran into rain bad enough to bother us or force us to stop the itinerary.
The only thing that was a little harder to deal with was the day-night temperature gap. Around noon it felt like summer at over 25°C, but when we got up early in the morning, it was really only about 8 or 9°C outside.
Daylight Analysis
Daylight affects the amount of time you actually have available to do things.
- We were there before April 5, and we all felt that the sun still wasn’t setting even at 7:30 or 8 p.m., while sunrise in the morning felt very late. If you arrive after April 5, once the time change has passed, it should probably feel more in line with expectations.
- The amount of daylight during that period was roughly 12 hours. But in high summer it reaches 14 hours, while in winter it drops to only 9 hours, so the difference is actually pretty big.
Itinerary Table and Total Distance
This was our actual route. After plotting it with GPS, I used an AI tool together with the Google Maps API to calculate it, and the total distance came to about 1,247.5 km. That still wasn’t as far as our round trip north from Perth to Nature Window.
Overall, I think it was quite manageable. There wasn’t a single day where the driving felt especially brutal.
Actual Itinerary Table
| Day | Route | Driving Time | Overnight Stay | Main Activities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Melbourne Airport → Tidal River | 3h23 (244km) | Tidal River | Arrival, pick up the motorhome, supermarket supplies |
| 2 | Trails inside Wilsons Prom | — | Tidal River | Summit Mt Oberon, look for wombats at dusk |
| 3 | Wilsons Prom → Mornington Peninsula | 2h38 (190km) | Mornington Peninsula | Winery, hot springs |
| 4 | Mornington Peninsula → Torquay → Apollo Bay | 3h (with ferry in the middle) (189km) | Apollo Bay | Bells Beach, start of the Great Ocean Road |
| 5 | Apollo Bay —> Twelve Apostles → Port Campbell | 1h27 (96.6km) | Port Campbell | Look for koalas at Kennett River |
| 6 | Port Campbell → Halls Gap | 2h32 (204km) | Halls Gap | Enter the Grampians, watch kangaroos at dusk |
| 7 | Grampians trails | — | Halls Gap | Pinnacle, Reed Lookout, Boroka |
| 8 | Halls Gap → Melbourne Airport | 2h47 (252km) | — |
The Mornington Peninsula Ferry: How to Take the Ferry from Sorrento to Queenscliff
Coming from Melbourne’s southeastern corner and trying to get to the Great Ocean Road on Melbourne’s western side, the thing I hesitated over most was whether to drive all the way across greater Melbourne or just take the ferry directly.
My conclusion was this: when you factor in time efficiency, cost, and driving distance, the ferry offers very high overall value.
My reasoning was:
- The ferry ride itself takes about 45 minutes, but if you go around via Melbourne city, it takes roughly 4 to 5 hours. In terms of time efficiency, the ferry is far better.
- As for budget, when we booked it, the fare was about AUD 150 to 170. When I traveled, it happened to coincide with oil prices surging because of the U.S. attack on Iran. If we had really driven around Melbourne city instead, the fuel cost might actually have been pretty similar.
- Going through Melbourne city significantly increases the driving risk.
- Driving your vehicle onto a ferry is a pretty special experience in itself.
The ferry company is called Searoad Ferries. It’s a ferry that carries both passengers and vehicles.
A few things to note:
- There are some discounts if you buy your ticket online in advance. I’d recommend booking ahead directly. When I bought ours, though, the website wasn’t very user-friendly. If you can, try a few different browsers.
- The ferry runs once an hour, but if your timing is flexible, you can try showing up and seeing whether you can get onto a sailing one hour earlier. I don’t recommend an open ticket, though. Having a specific sailing time gives you at least some guarantee.
- If you’re boarding with a motorhome, the driver’s fare is already included in the vehicle price. So if two people are traveling in the same vehicle, you should buy “one vehicle” plus “one adult ticket,” not “one vehicle” plus “two adult tickets.”
Choosing a Motorhome and Things to Watch Out For
I’ve already written a full comparison of the logic behind motorhome rentals in A Lazy Person’s Guide to Renting a Campervan in Australia and New Zealand. Here I’ll just add a few extra points that are specifically interesting for this route:
Pickup Locations: Fewer Rental Depots Near the Airport Than in Perth
Maybe I just didn’t search carefully enough, but when I rented through Motorhome Republic, I found that there were fewer rental depots near Melbourne Airport than near Perth Airport.
And in Perth, some of the rental locations are even reachable by metro or train.
By comparison, there isn’t really other public transportation around Melbourne Airport for this purpose, so Uber is the more convenient option.
In other words, install Uber before you leave.
This time we rented from Jucy / Star. The depot was about a 10-minute Uber ride from the airport.
Jucy is the small green vehicle company that’s fairly well known in Australia and generally considered one of the more budget-friendly rental brands. This time I rented from Star, their higher-end brand under the same company, and the vehicle was a FIAT (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, which means the Turin-based Italian automobile manufacturer, though honestly I had no idea what that was before I looked it up).
My driving impression was this: compared with the Mercedes motorhome we drove in Perth, there really was a noticeable difference in responsiveness.
But if you want one of the big-name brands, you may have to go a long way out, probably around 20 km from the airport, just to pick it up. When I thought about that, I decided convenience still mattered a lot.
Star’s Polaris 2
Of course, different vehicles naturally come with different interiors and layouts.
Beyond the driving responsiveness, I thought this vehicle itself was pretty interesting. Here were our impressions:
Pros:
- It came with reversing sensors and a backup display. Because the rear camera is mounted fairly high, it takes some getting used to in terms of angle, but having it is still definitely better than not.
- It has an electric drop-down bed. That means you don’t need to put the bedding away at all. Just raise the bed and the space underneath becomes something like a living room area, which is where we ate all our meals.
- There were quite a lot of charging ports for phones and other devices.
Cons:
- This vehicle really had too many corners and edges inside, and we kept banging our heads. Things we hit included the lower edge of the electric bed, the edge of the cabinet above the cooking area, and the TV mounted above the entryway… We used our heads to hit all of these things constantly, and there wasn’t much protection.
- The bathroom door wasn’t very easy to open and close.
- The mirror is inside the bathroom, which means you have to open the bathroom door to use the mirror. By the same logic, whoever is using the toilet keeps seeing themselves in the mirror too. A very literal “watching yourself while using the toilet” experience.
In Central Melbourne, Public Transport Is Still Better
We went into central Melbourne on our last day, and I came away with just one thought:
Thank goodness we didn’t drive the motorhome into the city.
There were simply too many people in the city center, the road layout was complicated, and there were trams as well.
Driving would seriously reduce your flexibility for getting around in the city, and then you also have to think about parking fees, where to park, and all the rest, which just doesn’t feel necessary.
This was very different from Perth. Perth had fewer people, and the whole place was chill enough that you could even park relatively close to Elizabeth Quay. In Melbourne, though, we gave up on that idea. Walking gave us far more flexibility than driving would have.
Choosing Campsites
Wilsons Prom Tidal River
Inside Wilsons Promontory National Park, this is basically the one campground option.
This is a public campground, and you absolutely must reserve it through the official website before departure. When booking, you can choose both your site and your dates.
If I remember correctly, there was a period earlier on when public campgrounds may have been free. Later, once more people started using them, they began charging, though I think it was still half price for a while so more people could use them. Whatever the price, though, this is the main large campground inside Wilsons Promontory National Park, and there are almost no other real alternatives.
Being able to book it is the most important thing. If you can’t, you’ll have to stay outside the park, which could add up to an extra hour of driving round trip.
Along the Great Ocean Road
There really are quite a few chain holiday parks along this route: Big4, Discovery Parks, NRMA, and so on.
I’ll just talk about the two we stayed at this time.
Great Ocean Road Park
Great Ocean Road Park looks like a private company at first glance, but it is actually publicly owned by The Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority. It wasn’t until we noticed the same green logo at other attractions that we realized this was in fact a government-run campground.
Great Ocean Road Park offers accommodation in several places along the full route, and we stayed at the Apollo Bay location.
Overall it was okay, but there was still a bit of a gap compared with private campgrounds.
For example, the Apollo Bay site at Great Ocean Road Park didn’t have a shared kitchen. Then again, maybe that’s just one difference between public and private campgrounds? The earlier campsite at Wilsons Prom was public too, and it also didn’t have a kitchen.
Still, since we were in a motorhome and had cooking equipment with us, it wasn’t much of a problem.
NRMA Port Campbell
Although I’d seen some negative reviews of this place online, we had a very good experience here.
Besides being clean and tidy and having a shared kitchen, it also sits beside a river, Port Campbell Creek. There’s a suspension bridge in the middle, and after climbing the nearby hill, you get some elevated views looking down. The campground itself is a lovely place for a casual wander.
Grampians Halls Gap
When choosing a campground in this area, there are roughly three strategies:
- Pure nature option: no electricity, farther from the small town area. Borough Huts Campground is one place to consider, but it’s very small, so it’s also hard to book. It’s a public campground.
- Campgrounds close to the town area of Halls Gap. The biggest advantage is that once you’re out, you don’t need to drive or worry about parking.
- On the northeast side of Halls Gap, a little farther from the town center, in the valley between the two mountains, there are a few campgrounds such as Breeze and NRMA.
But for us, it just so happened to be the official Easter holiday, and the entire national park was full of people. At that point, being able to book any campsite at all already felt pretty good. In the end, we stayed at Breeze.
Final Thoughts
In practice, this itinerary turned out to be entirely doable, and it matched our expectations quite well.
If you asked me how I’d adjust this trip next time, I’d probably make it a little richer, for example:
- I’d add a bit more wildlife-searching time, because honestly, animals are the kind of thing you never really get tired of watching.
- There were also some typical ticketed attractions that we ended up skipping because of timing or because we arrived on days they weren’t operating. For example, Melbourne’s heritage railway and the Mornington Peninsula hot springs would both have added more of an experience element.
But overall, if what you want is to experience the natural side of greater Melbourne, I think this is a fairly complete direction for planning a trip.
