Mornington Peninsula

The highest point on the Mornington Peninsula is Arthurs Seat, towering about 1000 feet over the surrounding countryside. From the hilltop you can see across Port Phillip Bay to the city skyline of Melbourne. You can hike to the top, or you can take the easy way -- the Arthurs Seat Eagle gondola!

At the top of the gondola, there are many walking paths to choose from. From the Summit Circuit Walk, you can really see the aquamarine gradient blue hues in the water below.

After riding the gondola back down we took a drive to the Western tip of the Mornington Peninsula - Point Nepean National Park. This is the site of a former military fort from the 1880's, and the first Australian shots of both WWI and WWII were fired here. 

Today the National Park is a heritage site, and we happened to be there during a weekend arts and crafts fair.

After a long day we were looking forward to spending an hour or two soaking in the nearby Peninsula Hot Springs. The write-up in all the guidebooks described a tranquil, relaxing, and rejuvenating series of hot pools. And it probably is very relaxing, just not on a holiday weekend afternoon with hordes of Melbournians all crowding into the tiny pools like sardines. We were a bit disappointed because the pools were surprisingly small for how many tickets they had sold. It was so crowded it was actually hard to find pools that had any available spots to sit in.

We made the best of it but gave up after about an hour -- to be honest it was our fault for trying to go at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon during a long weekend. We would have been better to go first thing in the morning; it did look like a really great place to unwind if there wasn't such a crowd.

We decided it would be more relaxing to grab a takeaway dinner from Red Gum BBQ and have a bottle of local sparkling wine back at the Airbnb. We were right -- it was much more relaxing!

We sat outside and enjoyed watching the many exotic birds here on the Peninsula -- Yellow Crested Cockatoos, black and white magpies, and our dining companion -- a female Australian King Parrot that made herself a tasty meal out of the grapes growing on the porch trellis.