Victoria: Great Alpine Road

A stunning scenic drive across the roof of Victoria

The Great Alpine Road, stretching almost 300km from Wangaratta to Bairnsdale, is one of Australia's classic summer touring routes. It begins in pastoral northern Victoria, not far from the Murray River, and takes you high into the Australian Alps, deep into the heart of two alpine national parks and finally brings you out, a stone's throw from the coast, in east Gippsland.

Beechworth

The Great Alpine Road begins (or ends) in Wangaratta 67km south-west of Albury-Wodonga, but 10km from the junction we were off on the first of many detours, this one to Beechworth, Victoria's best-preserved gold rush town.

In the 1860s Beechworth was the administrative centre of the rich Ovens Valley goldfields and the many grand buildings in town attest to the town's prosperity. The main street is lined with impressive buildings - former banks that are now guesthouses or restaurants, grand old pubs, the post office with its tower, the gold office, the courthouse, built in 1858, and the 1864 prison which took five years to build at a cost of 47,000 pounds. In total, 32 buildings in Beechworth are classified by the National Trust.

This is Ned Kelly Country. In his younger days Ned spent time at Beechworth Gaol and after his capture at Glenrowan he was sent to Beechworth. Authorities, however, found it impossible to find an impartial local jury, so Kelly was sent to Melbourne, where he was found guilty of murder and executed in 1880. You can visit his cell in the basement underneath the shire offices, where the information centre is today, as well as the Courthouse, where Kelly was committed to trial.

You can find more Ned Kelly memorabilia, including a replica of his armour at the Burke Museum, next to the Town Hall gardens. One of the oldest (and best) regional museums in Australia, The Burke Museum was formed in 1863 and named in honour of explorer Robert O'Hara Burke, of Burke and Wills fame. Burke was Superintendent of Police at Beechworth from 1854-58 before his death at Cooper Creek in 1861. The residents, when planning the memorial, decided that "a museum, because of its scientific nature, would be a fitting tribute to a gallant explorer". Inside, you'll find an impressive collection of Aboriginal artefacts, exhibits on the goldfields and the Beechworth Chinese community, a natural history collection, and a re-created street of 19th-century shops.

Beechworth today is a popular place to stop and wander for a few hours, or sit and sip local wine over a long lunch. Shoppers will find a range of shops and galleries selling everything from African sculpture to tinned haggis, and there are plenty of restaurants, small museums, such as the carriage museum and the Murray Breweries museum and stagecoach tours. The cemetery has many historic graves and a large Chinese section, complete with two large ceremonial burning towers.

Through hop fields and vineyards

Back on the Great Alpine Road, we managed just another 11km before we came to the turn off for Milawa. If you like your food and wine, this is place to hole up for a day or two. Brown Bros Winery has long been a Milawa gourmet institution, but add the winery's Epicurean Centre, Milawa Mustards, the Milawa Cheese Factory with its new bakery and Factory restaurant, the Olive Shop, Blue Ox Blueberry Farm, Whitehead's Mead and Honey farmgate and Merlot Restaurant at the five-star country house hotel Lindenwarrah, and you´ve got all the makings for a gourmet capital. The hotel is built for food and wine lovers - it's dead opposite Brown Bros, a short stroll to the village centre and the Olive Shop and Milawa Mustards, and a five-minute, nice-and-flat bike ride on one of the hotel's bicycles to the cheese factory. Rooms have great views over vineyards towards the mountains.

The Great Alpine Road travels on towards Myrtleford and Mount Buffalo, through hop fields and vineyards. This area was once one of the country's most important tobacco growing areas, but has been steadily replanted in the last few years with the more lucrative grape vines. Keep an eye out for the oddly-shaped tobacco curing sheds that still dot the countryside. Other crops you'll see (and taste) around here are chestnuts, walnuts and blueberries.

Porepunkah

We took the turn-off to Mount Buffalo National Park at Porepunkah. The park is basically a massive granite mountain, which was once three times its current size. Features include fantastically-shaped granite boulders and cliffs, waterfalls, alpine lakes and snow gum woodlands. In summer there is a wide range of walks as well as canoeing, swimming, horse riding, bike riding, abseiling, rock climbing and hang gliding. In winter it is a popular tobogganing, downhill and cross-country skiing area.

The road steeply winds up the mountain. Towards the top, you can take the turn-off to the Chalet or continue on past beautiful Lake Catani to Cresta Valley (a ski area in winter) and the Horn. Mount Buffalo Chalet, built in 1910, is a grand old guesthouse with breathtaking views. There are a number of lookouts below the chalet that have sweeping views over the cliffs, across the mountains all the way to Mount Kosciuszko and across the plains. We unpacked a picnic lunch of Milawa wine, cheese, olives, bread and mustards and watched, with a mixture of trepidation, envy and awe as abseilers and hang gliders launched themselves over the cliff edges in front of us.

Back down from the mountain top we headed for Bright, seven kilometres on from Porepunkah. With time to kill, we took a short drive through the Buckland River Valley (signposted at Porepunkah) for some lovely river valley scenery. If you're travelling in autumn, the many stately trees that line the streets in town are ablaze with colour. In summer, Bright's a bit of an outdoor adventure centre. We hired a canoe at Rio's Alpine Centre in Porepunkah and spent a lazy afternoon paddling and floating down the Ovens River. Early the next morning we headed out to Porepunkah airfield for a 20-minute tandem micro-light (basically a hang-glider with an engine attached to the back) flight over the township and up over Mount Buffalo, where we'd had our picnic lunch the day before.

A spectacular piece of road

From Bright, The Great Alpine Road snakes its way through the valley via little villages such as Smoko, once set amongst fields of tobacco. Mount Feathertop dominates the scenery and soon after Harrietville the road begins to climb into the Alps. This is a spectacular piece of road - sharp bends through forests of mountain ash and stringy bark that give way to stunning views of the valley below. Once you enter Alpine National Park near Mount St Bernard the road practically sits atop the ridge of the mountain for about 30km, giving absolutely spectacular views on both sides of the road. There are numerous areas where you can pull off the road for a quick photograph. In winter, the road can be icy, so care is needed.

The road passes through the ski villages of Mount Hotham and Dinner Plain before it begins to descend again to Omeo. An alternative route in summer is to travel from Bright to Omeo via Mount Beauty and Falls Creek across the Bogong High Plains. About 37km of this road is unsealed, and it closes in winter, but the views of Mt Bogong, Victoria's highest mountain, the Kiewa valley and the wind-swept high plains are worth it.

All downhill from here

It's all downhill from Omeo, a small town that dates back to the gold rush days of 1851, in the heart of rolling cattle-grazing land. There are some historic buildings in town, including the courthouse where author Rolf Boldrewood (Robbery Under Arms) whose real name was TA Browne was once magistrate. Just out of town is the Oriental Claims Historic Area, one of the largest gold-sluicing operations in the world. It is unique for the alluvial workings that were mined for more than 50 years - usually alluvial gold is worked out first and quartz mines provide payable gold for longer periods. There is a 45-minute walk called Ah Fongs Loop, one of the richest sites in the area.

The Great Alpine Road now winds its way through extensive forests, following various rivers and streams, almost all the way to Bruthen, a picturesque stretch of approximately 100km. Keep an eye out for the descriptively-named sections such as £1000 bend, Piano Bridge Creek and Pierce's Downfall. From here, it is another 24km to Bairnsdale, where we met up with the Princes Highway - the end of the Great Alpine Road, and the end of one of the few roads in Australia where the road itself is the destination, not just a way to get somewhere else.

Road conditions

The Great Alpine Road is fully sealed and is open all year. However, expect snow and ice in winter and snow chains must be carried during the snow season - Queen´s Birthday in June to the first weekend in October. They can be hired from outlets along the way.

Article by Lee Atkinson, August 2006. Image courtesy Vic Tourism.

All information was correct at the time of writing but may change without notice.