Melbourne and Victoria Travel Guide

Melbourne asks more of a visitor than Sydney does, and that is the honest reason people keep asking whether it is worth going at all. There is no single view to stand in front of and nothing obvious to photograph and cross off a list. What the city has instead is density, in the laneways and the coffee and the galleries and a sporting calendar that takes the whole place over several times a year, and it rewards travelers willing to walk somewhere without knowing what is at the end of it.

What is not in question is what sits west of the city. The Great Ocean Road runs roughly 150 miles from Torquay along the coast to the limestone formations near Port Campbell, and it is one of the great coastal drives anywhere. The Grampians, known also as Gariwerd, are a sandstone range about three hours northwest with the best walking in the state and a base town at Halls Gap. Together with the city, the three form a natural loop rather than three separate trips.

The one thing we would tell anyone planning this region is to avoid the single day Great Ocean Road tour out of Melbourne. It sells well, and it means eleven hours of which most is spent on a bus arriving at a viewing platform in the middle of the afternoon. Give the drive a night at Port Campbell and it becomes something else entirely. Below are the guides for the city and for the coast.