The beautiful Mornington Peninsula...

Big, beautiful things sometimes come in surprisingly small packages and that's one of the delights of the Mornington Peninsula.

Just an hours drive from Melbourne you could travel the length of this spectacular part of Victoria in quite a short time but its so much more enjoyable to spend several days meandering from one coast to the other.

Along the way, you'll discover just how many attractions are packed into this relatively small area, and how you're never more than a few minutes drive from the next one.

For example, there are over 40 wineries with cellar doors, and even more restaurants and cafes with magnificent views of vineyards or the sea (and sometimes both), a dozen or more outstanding golf courses, including Moonah Links host to the Australian Open, sheltered swimming bays and wild surf beaches, cosmopolitan towns such as Portsea, Sorrento and Mornington, coastal hideaways like Flinders and quiet hinterland villages including Red Hill.

The Mornington Peninsula has a long history of being a favourite holiday destination for the people of Melbourne.

Just an hour or so drive from Melbourne via the Nepean highway or the Frankston freeway, the Mornington Peninsula could be a little part of the Mediterranean, with its vineyards and olive groves, its historic country house retreats and intimate hotels.

At the very tip of the peninsula is Point Nepean National Park.

The most famous feature of our 25,000 hectares of national parks, Point Nepean was closed to the public for more than 100 years.

It's now open for everyone's enjoyment, and you can follow the cycle and pedestrian road to the extensive wartime military installations right at the tip of Point Nepean.

Formerly used as a quarantine station and by the military for various purposes including a gunnery range, the site is now very popular as it is still, for the most part, undeveloped.

Sections of the park are however still closed due to unexploded ordnance.

Also popular is Mornington Peninsula National Park.

On the North-Western side of the peninsula, facing Port Phillip Bay, you’ll find a number of popular holiday destinations.

These include Dromana, Rosebud, McCrae, Sorrento and the more exclusive Portsea, sometime referred to as 'the playground of the rich and famous', due to its lavish properties and expensive real estate.

There's plenty to explore on the Mornington Peninsula before you head off to other parts of Victoria's magnificent coastline.

A great place to start is at the wineries, where at more than 40 cellar doors you’ll quickly discover why the Mornington Peninsula has such an enviable reputation for its Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, not to mention the excellent Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula produces some of Australia’s most coveted Pinot Noir, and travellers who visit during winter could head home with a $3000 wine cellar containing around ten dozen of the Peninsula’s finest wines.

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