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Red Hill & Merricks

Merricks Beach

Shallow Western Port tide flats at Merricks Beach with timber holiday houses set behind the dunes

Photo · Peninsula Insider

Merricks Beach is a small residential hamlet on the Mornington Peninsula's Western Port coast, 80 km from Melbourne, with a shallow tide-dependent beach and no commercial centre.

Merricks Beach is a hamlet, not a town, and is largely the work of one generation of holiday-house builders who put up timber shacks along the dunes in the 1950s and 60s and then refused to let the place change much since. The beach is shallow, tide-dependent, and quiet - there is no surf, no foreshore café strip, and at low tide it spreads out into hundreds of metres of flat sand that visiting children turn into a private kingdom. The Merricks General Store, technically up in Merricks village, is the one polished thing nearby and is famous for a reason. Stay at Merricks Beach if you want the holiday-house feeling the Peninsula has mostly lost: front-door dunes, no shops, neighbours you have to walk past, and an evening rhythm built around a sundowner on the verandah.

A 1950s holiday-house hamlet with a tide-flat beach and no commercial centre - the Peninsula's quietest piece of coast.

Peninsula Insider - editor's note

Is Merricks Beach the right base?

Who this place rewards - and who should keep driving

It's for

  • young families
  • couples on a slow weekend
  • holiday-house weekenders

It's not for

  • anyone wanting a café strip
  • swimmers who need depth

Looking for a town to wander - Merricks Beach is a residential hamlet, by design.

Merricks Beach in brief

Merricks Beach in four lines

  1. 01 Merricks Beach is a 1950s-built holiday-house hamlet on a shallow Western Port beach - quiet, low-rise, no shops.
  2. 02 Best for: families with small children; couples wanting a slow weekend; anyone who values the old holiday-house Peninsula feeling.
  3. 03 Signature experience: low-tide afternoon on the sand flats, sundowner on the verandah, dinner from Merricks General Store the next day.
  4. 04 Two nights minimum; mid-week off-season is the best version.
  5. 05 There is no shop - pre-buy in Balnarring or Merricks village.

A perfect day here

A day in Merricks Beach

Late breakfast at Merricks General Store up in the village, drive back down for a low-tide walk along the sand flats, swim when the tide returns, sundowner on the verandah.

Check tides before booking - at low tide the water is a long walk away; at high tide it's at the dunes. Both have their pleasures, but only one suits children.

- Editor's note

Planning guides

Service guides for your Merricks Beach trip

Long-form editorial that helps you build a weekend, not just a list of places.

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3-Day Peninsula Itinerary → Weekend Plans → Best Brunch Guide → Hot Springs Guide → Winter Guide → Dog-Friendly Peninsula →

Where it sits

Merricks Beach on the Peninsula

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Keep going

Nearby places worth knowing next

Because a Peninsula trip is always made up of two or three pockets, not one.

Red Hill · village

Balnarring

Balnarring is the village that locals still treat as their own - a cluster of shops, a Thursday morning farmers' market, a bookshop that has outlasted all reasonable expectations, and a road network that somehow always seems to lead back to a cellar door. It sits on the eastern edge of the Peninsula's wine country, closer to Western Port than Port Phillip, and that changes the character: the light is softer, the crowds are thinner, and the vineyards here tend to be smaller family operations rather than destination estates. Balnarring is where you go when you want a Peninsula weekend that feels like the way things used to work before the region became a brand. The beach is genuine and quiet, the coffee is unpretentious, and the drive in from Tedesca or Montalto takes fifteen minutes of roads you've mostly never seen.

Red Hill · village

Merricks

Merricks is where the Peninsula's wine country starts to feel private. There is almost no main street to speak of, just a low-slung hall, winding vineyard roads, and a cluster of estates and restaurants that reward people who know where to turn off. The light is softer here than in Red Hill proper and the bay feels unexpectedly close. It is one of the Peninsula's best places to stay if your idea of a weekend away means vines outside the window, lunch that goes too long, and very little noise.

Western Port · village

Somers

Somers is the quiet Western Port answer to the bay-side beach villages, and it has been keeping that profile low on purpose for a century. The village is set back from a long shallow beach with tea-tree banking the dunes, a small general store, a yacht club that has changed almost nothing about itself since the 1950s, and not much else. Coolart Wetlands and Homestead, set in its 87-hectare reserve on the village edge, is the other reason to come - one of the best places to walk a wetland boardwalk under a winter sky on the entire Peninsula. The Lord Somers Camp gives the village a residual association with leadership weeks and a particular kind of Australian institutional history. Stay here if you want a beach village without polish, where the loudest sound in the morning is birds in the reserve.

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On the map

Merricks Beach, by location

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