Kiwi Roaming

Even though I am loving every minute of being a grandmother we booked a mini break away to the Portsea the last town on the Mornington Peninsular about 60km from Melbourne. Using an Accor free night we booked into the lovely lovely Mecure Portsea which is integrated into the local Golf Club. It was absolutely beautiful there, we had a view across the golf course to the sea and a small but very functional balcony to enjoy the heat and view from. The hotel took my membership status very seriously and we found a bottle of red wine plus a tray of petit four in the room which were yum.

Enough about the hotel. On our way to Portsea we stopped off at the Mock Red Hill Cidery for a tasting paddle and yummy lunch, it’s a really rustic low key place serving simple delicious food including apple pie. It was blowing a gale so we ate inside but could imagine spending an afternoon in their outdoor space.

From here we headed to the coast for a walk, as the peninsular narrows towards a geographical area called Point Nepean, the towns of Rye, Sorrento and Portsea sit along here and are all high end holiday areas. We took one of the many 500m+ long roads out towards the coast, each of the roads houses a community of baches and most do not have coastal access. On the west side the ocean beaches are wild and windy, on the Philip Bay side more sheltered with boats moored.

The one we picked took us out to Diamond Bay. From the carpark we followed a sandy path out to the beach and impressive bay, then we walked along to the Bay of Islands lookout via another narrow path. There is a coastal walkway along here which navigates the dunes along this western side of the peninsula. The rocky cliffs show layers of coloured stone, weathered and worn by the sea. There are viewing platforms along the coastline to keep walkers safely away from the cliffs.

Point Nepean – at the pointy end of the peninsula is Point Nepean. You can drive most of the way along the point with the sea increasingly visible on both sides across the dunes and forrest. This whole area was once a military area with gun emplacements (6) barracks, quarantine facilities, lookouts, all resourced from the late 1800s until after WWII. We drove to the carpark and then walked along the road which is there for a coach (that takes people to the end a couple of times a day) and the rangers. Via the road it’s just over 3km, on the way back we walked through the dunes path which is windy and longer. Unfortunately the beach access path was closed.

Port Nepean is also where former Prime Minister Harold Holt went for a swim in 1967 and never returned. The bay where his memorial resides it’s all fenced off to the beach with warning signs about unexploded bombs. Generally the beaches are fenced off with many no swimming signs. We did see one surfer riding back with his board after going out into the bay. We’re not really into military stuff but the way they have preserved much of this is great, you can walk in the tunnels, there are plenty of information boards where we learned they only ever fired twice from the 6 massive guns.

Our only complaint was the flies! So many flies.

Portsea – this whole area is made up of multimillion dollar homes with large fences and gates, sitting alongside the occasional original bach / crib. As Steve put it “I’ve never seen as many Porche four wheel drives in one place before”. The beaches are lovely, sandy with wee coves as they face into the Philip Harbour and there are many many pleasure boats. We went to the one cafe in Portsea for breakfast one day which sits alongside a park with playground and toilets, right beside the beach, so needless to say it’s license to print money, not to mention the dogs everyone seemed to have with them.

Sorrento – Sorrento a slightly larger town right alongside Portsea, they kinda blend into each other. The main street is all high end boutiques and real estate agents and the only supermarket in the area, an IGA, is the most expensive super market we’ve been to in Australia. There are also plenty of cafes, gelato shops and two bottle stores. We took a walk called Millionaires Walk to look at the outsides of $5M+ beachfront houses and were lucky (or unlucky) enough to see someone returning home in their helicopter landing on their beachfront lawn.

Rye – the other town on this end of the peninsula is Rye which is about a 30 minute drive from Portsea and has a decent sized Woolworths. We stopped at one of the beaches here for lunch one day in a cafe which was pretty average ie: typical of a busy beach front cafe. The most interesting thing along this part of the coastline is the camping grounds which sit between the road and the beach. To be fair the same exist in Sorrento but these are deeper – as in more space between the road and sea – so not quite as fascinating as Rye where there are tents pitched right next to the busy road and packed in like sardines.

We had a lovely couple of days of relaxing and beach walking. It was slightly cooler than in the city with temperatures in the mid 20’s – although when we left and headed back up into the hills for a final walk that temperature dropped to 18C with a cold wind so we headed to a pub for lunch instead.