Sorrento Sunset 7:27 PM Case 02 is open · Play
Spring Insider · October 2026 Spring 2026
A local point of view.
A Peninsula worth knowing.
PlayWhere in the Peninsula is PI?
She’s out again.
Case 02: Took the long way to dinner. Ask the locals, read the land, find her before sunset. Find her and go in the draw for $250 to dine at Doot Doot Doot, Jackalope.
Free to play, no account.
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?
Turning up expecting a full-service village - Shoreham is a beach and a few roads, nothing more.
Shoreham in brief
A perfect day here
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
What's mapped here
Stay
When a place has a workable bed attached, it stops being a stop and starts becoming a base.
Illustrative, not Iluka Retreat & Camp. Photo: mattyv.au · P1030597, Balnarring rural sunrise · cropped and converted to WebP SourceLicence
20 Shoreham Rd, Shoreham VIC 3916
Styled bell tents for two on a 36-acre Shoreham property, with lake access and shared powered kitchen and bathrooms.
Illustrative, not Mantons Creek Estate. Photo: faVori rouge · Mornington Peninsula vineyard · resized and converted to WebP SourceLicence
240 Tucks Rd, Shoreham VIC 3916
Vineyard accommodation at Mantons Creek Estate in Shoreham, with a restaurant and cellar door on the property.
See the editorial rankings → Best Places to Stay on the Peninsula
Get outside
Walks, beaches, lookouts, and markets worth scheduling around the meals.
Attraction 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.
Open the guide →Read this place properly
Long-form editorial that builds the picture of a place beyond any single visit.
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
Long-form editorial that helps you build a weekend, not just a list of places.
Keep going
Because a Peninsula trip is always made up of two or three pockets, not one.
Ocean Coast · town
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 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
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.
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On the map
Every editorially verified pin in Shoreham on one screen - toggle a category, click any marker for the editor's note.
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