Restaurant Cape Schanck
Barragunda Dining
165 Boneo Rd, Cape Schanck VIC 3939 · $$$$
Chef Simone Watts's farm dining room on a 1000-acre regenerative estate at Cape Schanck, one of the Peninsula's most compelling new voices.
Gunnamatta Ocean Beach
Gunnamatta is long, wild, and remote-feeling despite being accessible from the main road. Powerful surf, huge skies, and almost nobody on the sand outside peak summer. This is not a swimming beach in any sensible sense - the rips are serious, the waves are powerful, and the water temperature is cold most of the year - but it is an extraordinary beach for walking and watching the power of Bass Strait.
Surfers love the consistent beach break and you will always see a few sitting out the back if the swell is up. Everyone else comes for the experience of standing on the sand with nothing but ocean ahead of them and feeling properly small.
A good late-afternoon stop for the light. Stay on the sand; do not enter the water unless you know exactly what you are doing.
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Where to eat, drink, or stay nearby
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Villa Cape Schanck
The Cape Retreat
Cape Schanck VIC 3939 · $$$$
Twelve luxury suites on a Cape Schanck hilltop with Bass Strait views, primarily exclusive-hire, individual suites may be available on enquiry.
Spa Cape Schanck
One Spa at RACV Cape Schanck Resort
Trent Jones Dr, Cape Schanck VIC 3939 · $$$
The Peninsula's best resort-style day spa, proper scale, serious treatment menu, and a cliff-edge location that nobody else on the Peninsula can match.
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More ways to use this side of the Peninsula
Ashcombe Maze & Lavender Gardens
Ashcombe Maze holds Australia's oldest symmetrical hedge maze, a circular rose garden, a lavender labyrinth, and a small café that sells lavender everything, ice cream, scones, shortbread, tisane, from a room that smells exactly like the fields outside. The gardens are at their peak in spring when the lavender is up, but the maze works in any season and the café is reason enough in autumn. The place is deliberately low-tempo. You walk the maze, you sit in the lavender, you drink tea, and you leave feeling like you have stumbled into a slightly older, gentler version of the Peninsula. It is a good rainy-afternoon reset and an even better spring morning plan. Pair it with Flinders Sourdough on the way through or Flinders General Store afterwards. Bring the kids. Bring older visitors. Do not try to be cynical about it, the charm wins.
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Bushrangers Bay
Bushrangers Bay is a hidden ocean beach accessed via a 2.5-kilometre walk through coastal heathland from Cape Schanck - and, remarkably, almost nobody goes here even in summer. In April it is completely deserted. Dramatic rock formations, sea caves along the cliffs, and the raw power of the Southern Ocean breaking against the headlands at the far end of the beach. The walk in from Cape Schanck is straightforward and well-marked, descending gradually through the heath to the back of the beach. Once you arrive, the scale of the place - cliffs, caves, ocean, almost no human presence - is the reason to come. Walk the sand, look at the rock formations, turn around. One of the Peninsula's genuinely remote-feeling experiences, hiding in plain sight. Bring water; there are no facilities at the beach itself.
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Bushrangers Bay Walk
Bushrangers Bay is the walk we send people to when they say they want to see the wilder side of the Peninsula without committing to a full-day hike. The track drops from the Cape Schanck lighthouse precinct through coastal scrub and opens onto a broad crescent of basalt and sand that feels much further from Melbourne than it is. The return climb is enough to justify lunch afterwards, but not so punishing that it tips into chore. Do it in the late afternoon when the light starts to flatten across the water and the whole coastline turns silver.
Open the guide →Further reading
Journal pieces that deepen this stop
Trail Guide 6 min
Cape Schanck — The Complete Guide
22 April 2026
The 1859 limestone lighthouse, the boardwalk to Pulpit Rock and Pebble Beach, and the 5.4km return walk to Bushrangers Bay. Cape Schanck lighthouse grounds are free from 6am — lighthouse tours are ticketed. Here is everything.
Investigation 7 min
St Andrews Beach Golf Course — The World-Ranked Course Anyone Can Book
14 April 2026
If you want one golf story that explains the Peninsula properly, start here. Tom Doak architecture, genuine global ranking, and public-access bookings that turn prestige into a real weekend.