Camping on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula
The Mornington Peninsula was brand new to me, which is baffling considering how close it is to Melbourne. There it was hiding under Melbourne’s cloak, just far enough away to hover under the foreign tourist radar.
Melburnians are well aware of Mornington and regularly make the 90-minute drive to this beachy wonderland during summer weekends. And if the miles of foreshore campsites are any indication, the peninsula gets packed.
Where to Camp on Mornington Peninsula
We turned into the Capel Sound Foreshore campground mostly at random and paid for our site at the ranger’s office. Still empty in mid-November, we had our pick and went with a powered site (off peak $33/night) close to the beach access trail and opposite a cozy little craft beer pub called Sound Bar.
Long stretches of grassy campsites line the foreshore along Port Phillip Bay, and one campground virtually runs into the next: McCrae to Rosebud to Capel Sound.
It seemed safe enough, though a young family of four set up their tent next to us and had their esky stolen in the night. It was a sucky reminder that camping does leave you more exposed to opportunistic thieves, which of course we know only too well by now.
But enough about that! On to the highlights, of which there were many.
Things to do on the Mornington Peninsula
Beach Boxes
Mornington Peninsula is famous for its bathing boxes, also called beach boxes. They’re the colorful little sheds lining the beaches, privately owned and rented out to visitors.
Though Brighton Beach is one of the most well-known spots for beach boxes, there are over 1300 boxes on the peninsula so you can’t miss them. They range in size and function; some seemed to be used mainly for storage, others were impeccably furnished like individual rooms in a house.
The Mornington Peninsula beach boxes are hot commodities, often passed down through generations and sold for shockingly high prices. So if you’ve got a spare hundred thou or three, you too could be the proud owner of a beach box.
Port Nepean National Park
Right at the southern tip of the Mornington Peninsula is Port Nepean National Park. It’s where you can find the Point Nepean defense sites, which were established to protect Port Phillip Bay and, ultimately, the city of Melbourne.
When Victorian gold was discovered in 1851, heaps of people arrived by sea, bringing along a host of diseases like cholera, typhoid, and smallpox. As a result, a quarantine station was established. When the British imperial troops cut out in 1870, the colonies built a series of forts along the peninsula, creating what was thought of as a mini-Gibraltar in Australia.
London Bridge
Drive to the back side of the natural park to visit a natural formation called London Bridge. It’s an enormous sandstone structure and you can walk right into to it. Be careful, because the water rushes through as it pleases; I imagine it wouldn’t take much before you were swept right out to sea.
Glitz and Glamour in Portsea and Sorrento
The glitzy towns of Portsea and Sorrento also sit at the southern end of the peninsula, and they were significantly busier than our quiet neck of the woods. From London Bridge we stopped briefly for an ice cream in Portsea, then returned on our last morning to catch a ferry across the mouth of the bay.
Ferry between Mornington and Melbourne
Rather than drive north through Melbourne, we took the shortcut—a 40 minute sail to Queenscliff. It cost $109 one way to cross with our Nissan Patrol, camper trailer, and two passengers. I believe it would have been slightly cheaper to buy tickets online but we weren’t that organized. Plus we got a free Sunday newspaper so I was happy.
The ferry was a perfect option for us because we were due to catch a flight out of Geelong, which is half an hour’s drive from Queenscliff. We only passed through Queenscliff, but it looked like a nice little seaside town.
By then I was too excited about our next destination to worry too much about missing out, because we were TASMANIA-BOUND.
More about that soon.
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