Sorrento Sunset 5:35 PM

Winter Insider · August 2026 Winter 2026

Flinders & the Ocean Coast

Shoreham

Shoreham beach and rocky foreshore on a still Peninsula afternoon

Photo · Peninsula Insider

Shoreham is a small coastal village on the Mornington Peninsula's Western Port shoreline, 95 km from Melbourne, with a foreshore reserve, a beach swimming pool at low tide, and Pier 10 vineyard nearby.

Shoreham barely qualifies as a village, and that is exactly its charm. A store, a hall, a tangle of narrow roads threading down to one of the loveliest small beaches on the Peninsula, and a handful of vineyards and olive groves that quietly produce some of the region's best fruit. The beach is family-scaled and protected enough for children, the bush behind it runs into Point Leo, and the drive up onto the ridge puts you in cellar door country within ten minutes. This is where locals go when the southern beaches start to feel loud and the long weekend crowd has swallowed Sorrento. Park once, walk to the beach, and stay until the light goes.

A tiny coastal settlement where bush, vineyard and beach sit almost on top of each other.

Is Shoreham the right base?

Who this place rewards - and who should keep driving

It's for

  • quiet beach days
  • artists and walkers
  • people escaping the Sorrento circuit

It's not for

  • large groups
  • anyone wanting lots of dining options

Turning up expecting a full-service village - Shoreham is a beach and a few roads, nothing more.

Shoreham in brief

Shoreham in four lines

  1. 01 Shoreham is the most quietly beautiful small beach on the Western Port coast - a family-scaled foreshore backed by bush, with cellar doors ten minutes up the ridge.
  2. 02 Best for: artists; walkers linking to Point Leo or the Two Bays trail; anyone who needs to recalibrate after a day on the Sorrento side.
  3. 03 Signature experience: Honeysuckle Beach at low tide, then drive up to one of the ridge cellar doors for a quiet afternoon.
  4. 04 Half a day; best as a deliberate detour rather than a destination.

A perfect day here

A day in Shoreham

Coffee packed from elsewhere, Honeysuckle Beach in the morning, ridge cellar door after lunch, back for the evening light.

Low tide makes the beach feel twice the size and worth the drive; high tide makes it feel cramped.

- Editor's note

Stay

Sleep in Shoreham

When a place has a workable bed attached, it stops being a stop and starts becoming a base.

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Glamping Shoreham

Iluka Retreat & Camp

Red Hill South VIC 3937 · $$

Thirty structures on 36 acres near Shoreham, the Peninsula's only fixed-site multi-tent group glamping venue, with a private freshwater lake.

wellnessslow
Villa Shoreham

Mantons Creek Estate

240 Tucks Rd, Shoreham VIC 3916 · $$$

Four adults-only vineyard suites with on-estate Italian dining, two minutes from Ten Minutes by Tractor, the most under-indexed southern Red Hill base.

anniversarycellar door

Get outside

Explore moves anchored to Shoreham

Walks, beaches, lookouts, and markets worth scheduling around the meals.

Explore near Shoreham →

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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Read this place properly

Journal pieces connected to Shoreham

Long-form editorial that builds the picture of a place beyond any single visit.

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Venue Guide 5 min

Ashcombe Maze & Lavender Gardens - Visitor Guide

22 April 2026

Multiple travel websites still list Ashcombe as closed. It is not. The café re-opened January 2025, the maze is fully operating Thursday to Monday, and the lavender labyrinth uses 4,000 plants across 40+ varieties. Here is the accurate guide.

Planning guides

Service guides for your Shoreham trip

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

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Where it sits

Shoreham 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.

Ocean Coast · town

Flinders

Flinders sits on the wild southern edge of the Peninsula and carries itself with a kind of salt-air confidence. The village is compact but smart - a bakery, a handful of good shops, an old pub, and a coastline that feels a world away from the bay-facing polish further north. Base yourself here if you want your mornings to begin with wind off Bass Strait, your afternoons with a drive back inland for lunch, and your evenings under a harder, cleaner sky.

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.

Red Hill · village

Red Hill

On a misty basalt plateau above the Peninsula's central ridge, Red Hill has arranged some of the strongest food and wine in Victoria into a circuit that rewards the unhurried. A village by strict measure - a general store, a monthly market, vineyard restaurants that don't advertise from the highway - it nonetheless organises the whole upper Peninsula around itself. The winery restaurant cluster here - Ten Minutes by Tractor, Montalto, Paringa Estate, Principia - has no serious peer in the state. Come on Saturday; plan lunch first.

Curated by our editors.

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Peninsula This Weekend 18 to 19 July

July sits in the quieter stretch of Peninsula winter, and that is the point. The lead booking is a truffle hunt at Red Hill. Sunday is for the sculpture park at Pt. Leo.

  • How to Build a Red Hill Saturday
  • The Cellar Door Short List
  • Things to Do on the Mornington Peninsula
Read in 3 minutes · Used all weekend

On the map

Shoreham, by location

Every editorially verified pin in Shoreham on one screen - toggle a category, click any marker for the editor's note.

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