Enjoy a family holiday in Morninton Peninsula and visit Mount Martha. Photo / Visit Victoria
Enjoy a family holiday in Morninton Peninsula and visit Mount Martha. Photo / Visit Victoria
It’s not just Daisy the caravan that’s gloriously retro on this nostalgic seaside holiday near Melbourne, writes Dani Wright.
Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula is a little more than an hour from Melbourne CBD with one side of its thin strip of land framed by rugged Bass Coast surf beaches and the other by sheltered Phillip Bay beaches – the distance between the two just 5km in parts.
My daughter Georgie and her friend Scarlett (both 14) choose the quiet bay option on our weekend away and we check into a vintage caravan named Daisy at Kanasta Caravan Park.
Daisy the caravan's retro interior.
Photo / Dani Wright
It’s set a few blocks back from the beach in the sleepy seaside township of Rye, famous for its summer foreshore carnivals, with some liking the refreshingly authentic atmosphere so much they’ve been returning annually for the past 40 years.
“It’s quiet at night with kids playing, it has a good feel about it,” said park manager Suzanne, who had a fascination with Rye and moved from Melbourne with a one-year plan and has stayed for six. It’s that kind of place. A place where people, and time, seem to linger.
It reminds me of visits to Petone Beach to visit my grandparents, when life was quieter, cares were fewer and the highlight of the day was the neighbour bringing us Dagwood dogs or a bag of pipi.
Elizabeth is another cool kitted-out caravan at Kanasta Caravan Park. Photo / Kanasta Caravan Park
To get our bearings on the location from a higher angle, we jump on the gondola up Arthurs Seat hill with views across the bay and towards Melbourne City.
At the summit, there’s the Seawinds Gardens with an extensive collection of established exotic evergreen and deciduous trees planted in 1946 by private owners Sir Thomas and Lady Travers, back when the gondola was merely a chairlift.
Jump on the Arthur’s Seat Eagle gondola for views across the bay and towards Melbourne City. Photo / Dani Wright
It’s almost as inspiring as the views to wander the gardens and think about how life must have been when they were first planted and we pass wedding parties making use of the landscape as photo backdrops.
Built a year after the original chairlift in 1961 is the Dromana drive-in, one of only three left in Victoria. We arrive early to closed doors, so we head to Mount Martha to visit the colourful bathing boxes to fill some time.
These huts – 1200 along the Mornington Peninsula foreshore from Mount Eliza to Portsea, can be purchased only by local ratepayers who live in the local municipality, and the price is high – a few years ago one sold for $650,000, that’s $26,000 per square metre.
Some are done up to the nines in lollipop paint colours and others are more shabby chic, but all are characterful. An elderly woman sits on the balcony of one, her little dog by her feet watching the sun set over the bay and in the next hut a family with toddlers come in for towels after a dip.
Visit the nostalgic and brightly-coloured bathing boxes at Mount Martha. Photo / Dani Wright
We arrive back at the drive-in and Georgie and Scarlett race from the car to the playground as the beautifully clear sky starts to fill with stars, twinkling down on the fields where three screens are set up, as well as a small outdoor movie area with a handful of seats as a “deckchair cinema”.
Before the movie, we order classic hot dogs, burgers, milkshakes and popcorn at Shel’s Diner, modelled after Mel’s Diner at Universal Studios in California. It’s jam-packed full of movie paraphernalia from ET to Ghostbusters, Poison Ivy to Charlie Brown.
Shel’s Diner is modelled after Mel’s Diner at Universal Studios in California. Photo / Dani Wright
The 50s diner booths are a comfortable escape from the car boot as nostalgic tunes blast from the stereo. Wrapping up in our coats with the radio tuned to the Dromana Drive-in movie channel, we settle in for the film, making a mental note to bring pillows and a duvet when we return.
The next day, we wriggle into wetsuits and head underwater at the Rye Pier in search of the Octopuses Garden Marine Trail, which is meant to be a 200m trail under the pier with signs showing interesting facts along the way.
Even though it’s featured online and mentions large signs near the jetty that outline how to use it, we can’t see any and no one on the shore knows about it. Neither does the dive shop across the road from the beach – even though many things have remained in Rye for decades, the marine trail seems to have gone.
There are still plenty of interesting things to spot under the pier and it’s an easy snorkelling option for beginners as we enter the water from the beach and point to giant eleven-armed sea starfish clinging to the round wooden pillars.
As we move further out to sea there are dozens of scuba divers practising beneath us and a super-sized stingray swoops beneath our feet. As we reach the end of the pier, we’re met with an Australian fur seal blocking the exit asleep in the sun on the wooden pontoon.
We head to a nearby ladder, chatting with one diver who tells us about a spot a few hundred metres from the end of the pier, 10m deep, where there have been a few old toilets and shopping trolleys dumped, making a perfect “garden” for an octopus, ingenious at upcycling and making their home in the pipes.
Once we’re dry, we head to the Hive Loukoumades for a dozen delicious Greek round doughnuts, half white chocolate, caramel sauce and crushed oreo and the other half white chocolate and raspberry sauce, all topped with fresh strawberries.
The next day we visit the Portsea Pier and see the dive boats heading out for the day as swell surges against the pier. It seems a bit rough to snorkel, so we miss out on viewing the famous bearded sea dragons, but a coastal pathway leads to a picturesque bay lined with colourful boathouses where we can swim in between the boats in a sheltered spot.
Portsea Pier in Mornington Peninsula.
Photo / Getty Images
Before we head back to Melbourne, we can’t resist one last snorkel at the Sorrento front beach where we spot a gentle fiddler ray sleeping in the sand, as well as sea slugs and little critters burrowing in.
The journey back down the long coastal road to the city shows many other great snorkelling spots for beginners, which proved the perfect activity to do with teenagers. Adding the drive-ins and a retro caravan completed the weekend to give it a slower pace and time to enjoy the simple things in life before returning to a week filled with teenage busyness.
