Restaurant Main Ridge
Allis Wine Bar
1333 Mornington-Flinders Rd, Main Ridge VIC 3928 · $$$
The low-waste, low-key sibling of Ten Minutes by Tractor's fine dining room, small plates, garden-harvested produce, and a thoughtful wine list.
Sunny Ridge Strawberry Farm
Sunny Ridge has been running pick-your-own strawberry picking on the Red Hill plateau long enough to be the reference point for this kind of experience on the Peninsula. The season runs from November through April, outside that window there's nothing to pick, so check before you drive. During the season, the format is straightforward: collect a punnet, walk the rows, fill it, weigh it at the counter, and pay by weight. The simplicity is the point.
The farm café serves strawberry ice cream and sundaes made from the estate's own fruit. It's not a gourmet café, it's a family destination with a very clear purpose, and it does that purpose well. Go in the morning on a clear day when the fruit is cool and the rows aren't crowded. Later in the afternoon on busy weekends, the most accessible rows can be well-picked-over.
Wear clothes you don't mind staining. The juice is persistent, and small children will make the most of it.
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Where to eat, drink, or stay nearby
The best explore pages should lead somewhere next.
Winery Main Ridge
Dexter Wines
210 Foxeys Hangout Rd, Red Hill South VIC 3937 · $$$
Tod Dexter's quiet, considered estate, appointment-only tastings for a small, serious pinot and chardonnay program.
Bakery Main Ridge
Johnny Ripe
1180 Mornington-Flinders Rd, Main Ridge VIC 3928 · $$
The Peninsula's hinterland pie stop, proper beef pies, a sweets cabinet worth detouring for, and a garden café out the back.
Keep going
More ways to use this side of the Peninsula
Arthurs Seat Eagle
Arthurs Seat is the Peninsula's highest point and the Eagle is the gondola that runs people up it - twenty minutes each way, dangling over eucalypt canopy, with the bay widening out below until Melbourne appears on the northern horizon. As a first move on a Peninsula weekend it is surprisingly effective: you arrive, you go up, and the whole region orients itself around you in a way that makes the rest of the trip easier to plan. The summit has a cafe, a lookout deck, and short walking trails through the scrub. Come at the start of a clear day for the view north across the bay; come at the end of a clear day for the light spreading over the ridge. Go midweek if you can - weekends in school holidays can be busy. Book tickets online if visiting in summer.
Open the guide →Balnarring Beach
Balnarring Beach is Western Port's quiet argument against the bay-side beaches most visitors default to. The sand is paler, the water flatter, and the crowd is almost entirely local - a few families on summer weekends, a scattering of walkers the rest of the year. The beach itself runs for kilometres, with ti-tree scrub backing the dunes and almost no built infrastructure. This is the Peninsula beach people come to when they want to swim without any of the theatre. Good for a slow afternoon between a Merricks lunch and a Balnarring produce stop. Very good for dusk walks in autumn when the light turns mauve across the water. Go through the Balnarring Beach hamlet for the easiest access point. Bring your own chair. Don't expect a kiosk.
Open the guide →Greens Bush - Two Bays Section
The Greens Bush section of the Two Bays Walking Track is the most rewarding bushwalking segment the Peninsula has - 8.9 kilometres one-way through the largest remnant bushland on the Peninsula, with ancient grasstrees (some more than two hundred years old), pockets of dense tea-tree alive with birds, fern gullies, and open eucalypt forest interrupted only by the sound of the occasional kangaroo. This is where the walking really slows down. The canopy closes overhead in places, the understory birds work the tea-tree continuously, and the track passes through a landscape that looks more or less as it would have before European settlement. Genuinely beautiful, and far quieter than the coastal sections of the same trail. Walk it one-way with a car shuffle, or do a shorter circuit from the Greens Bush Carpark off Baldrys Road. Best in autumn and spring.
Open the guide →Further reading
Journal pieces that deepen this stop
Hub Guide 8 min
Main Ridge: The Peninsula Insider Guide
2 May 2026
Main Ridge is the Peninsula's highest, coolest and most wine-serious pocket — less a village than a plateau of good decisions. Come when you want the Peninsula stripped back to vineyards, fog, lunch and roads lined with trees rather than distractions.
Cellar Door Dispatch 6 min
The Cellar Door Short List: Five Producers Worth the Appointment
6 April 2026
Not the biggest estates, not the flashiest rooms. The five Peninsula cellar doors where the wines - and the people pouring them - actually change how you think about the region.