Tag: Victoria

The Yarra Valley, Victoria

The Yarra Valley is one of the state’s most popular tourist destinations, with its rich culinary and wine culture attracting visitors from the busy city, as well as from all over the country. For the avid wine lover, or epicurean, the Yarra Valley is definitely one of Australia’s must see destinations, with over 80 wineries in the Yarra Valley wine region.

Port Fairy, Victoria

Port Fairy By Marco Stojanovik Port Fairy is a charming, well-preserved, 19th century seaside town in western Victoria, the middle of three harbours along the coast between Portland and Warrnambool. It boasts wide, cobbled streets lined with magnificently restored heritage cottages, museums, and old stone churches, situated on a stretch of spectacular coastline filled with […]

Beechworth, Victoria

Beechworth By Marco Stojanovik Historic Beechworth, situated in north east Victoria between Wangaratta and Wodonga, is one of Australia’s best-preserved towns from the gold rush era. Having avoided modernisation of much of its built environment, it is home to 32 elegant National Trust-listed buildings, most of which were constructed in the 1860s. They sit along […]

Budj Bim Eel Traps, Victoria

Budj Bim Eel Traps Over thousands of years the Gunditjmara people of southwestern Victoria, Australia, used volcanic rock created by the Budj Bim lava flow to construct a sophisticated stone aquaculture complex of fish traps, weirs, dams, and channels. Drawing upon deep knowledge of water cycles and migration routes, they created and manipulated landscape over […]

Ancient Aboriginal trade routes of Australia

Ancient Aboriginal trade routes of Australia Trade was a central part of life for Aboriginal people prior to the British settlement of Australia. Trading routes criss-crossed the nation, dispersing goods, information, technologies and culture thousands of kilometres away from their origins. The extent of trade was vast. The historian Geoffrey Blainey has written that ‘it […]

Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Victoria

Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Victoria In 2019, the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the first site to be included solely on the grounds of its Aboriginal cultural importance. Dating back at least 6600 years, the budj bim landscape and eel trap network is one of the world’s oldest […]

The Murray River, Australia

The Murray River The mighty Murray River, Australia’s longest river and main stream of the Murray Darling Basin, flows some 2,700 km across south-eastern Australia. Rising in the Australian Alps, it drains the western side of Australia’s highest mountains before meandering north westerly across Australia’s inland plains, forming the border between the states of New […]

The Australian Alps Walking Track

The Australian Alps Walking Track Winding 650 kilometres through Australia’s highest reaches, the Australian Alps Walking Track is one of Australia’s most challenging – and most rewarding – long walks, passing through snowy peaks, stunted snow gums, and wildflower valleys. The trail begins in the gold town of Walhalla in eastern Victoria, wanders through the […]

Arcades of Melbourne, Victoria

Arcades of Melbourne, Victoria Imagine yourself in Marvellous Melbourne, in the second half of the 19th century. The Gold Rushes – and subsequent land boom – have made your city the richest in the world, and the second-biggest in the British Empire. Industrial advances and trade have brought luxury goods from all around the world […]

Designing Melbourne, Victoria

Designing Melbourne, Victoria For more than seven years, Melbourne has ranked top among the world’s most liveable cities, recognised for its urban planning and cultural vibrancy. And while some might attribute this to the good coffee, tram network, and vibrant laneway culture, Melbourne‘s success today can also be understood as owing to much earlier planning decisions, […]

Landscape of Southern Australia from Mallee and Mulga.

Travellers regularly pass through open country and roadsides lined with mallee, and when they penetrate a little further north into more arid country they encounter mulga.  Many people know little about these symbolic Australian plants.

Understanding Aboriginal aquaculture

Using weirs, dams, fish traps, and other technologies, Aboriginal communities directed water in order to ensure a consistent and abundant supply of fish. These sites became major centres of trade and cultural exchange, and many supported permanent communities, challenging the myth that all Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers.

Aboriginal land use in the Mallee

Odyssey Traveller visits the Mallee regions of Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia as part of our new tour of the Southern States of Australia. Designed to make you re-think the way you understand Australia.

Mildura, Victoria

Mildura, Victoria On the banks of the Murray River, Mildura is a leafy oasis in the midst of a dry region, and a magnet for tourists since the beginning of the 20th century. But delve deeper into the story of this regional centre, and you’ll find a quirky history full of larger-than-life eccentrics and big […]

Benalla, Victoria

Benalla, Victoria Known as the ‘Rose City’, the picturesque rural centre of Benalla is the gateway to Victoria’s high country. Benalla is situated on the Broken River, a tributary of the Murray-Darling. The town is located on a flat floodplain, to the north and west of the Great Dividing Range. The first inhabitants of the […]

Victorian architecture of central Melbourne, Australia

Victorian architecture of central Melbourne, Australia Thanks to two economic booms bringing prosperity and people to the growing city, ‘Marvellous Melbourne‘ was the quintessential Victorian ‘boom-town’. Today, the city has the finest collection of Victorian architecture in Australia, and one of the finest in the world, with an abundance of hidden gems to explore. The […]

Castlemaine, Victoria

Castlemaine, Victoria Less famous than Bendigo and Ballarat, Castlemaine was an important centre of the Australian Gold Rush. Today, its a charming rural town with opulent Gold Rush architecture that belies its small size. The traditional owners of the land around Castlemaine are the Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal people. While pastoralists settled in the region, […]

Bendigo, Victoria

Bendigo, Victoria One of Victoria’s great Gold Rush cities, Bendigo is widely considered to have the best collection of architecture in regional Australia. Bendigo is Australia’s fourth-biggest inland city (after Canberra, Toowoomba, Queensland, and Ballarat), and the fourth-biggest city in Victoria – though the population difference between Bendigo and  rival Ballarat is only marginal. It […]

Echuca and Murray-Darling Trade, Victoria

Echuca and Murray-Darling Trade, Victoria The ‘paddle-steamer capital of the world’, Echuca on the Murray River might be Victoria‘s prettiest small town. The name Echuca is an Yorta Yorta Aboriginal word meaning ‘meeting of the waters’. It is here that three great rivers meet: the Goulburn, the Campaspe, and the Murray. The Yorta Yorta were […]

Ballarat, Victoria

Ballarat, Victoria The gold rush town of Ballarat, Victoria played host to one of the most significant events in Australian history – the Eureka Stockade. Today, this elegant regional city boasts some of Australia‘s finest Victorian architecture, fascinating historical museums, and a fantastic collection of fine art.  With a population of 105, 471 people, Ballarat […]

The Burke and Wills Expedition, 1860-61

The leaders of the Victorian Exploring Expedition, Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills are forever etched together in the Australian imagination, representing Australia’s most ambitious and most tragic journey of the 19th century age of exploration.