Day three of our Across Australia famil with Sydney Melbourne Touring is the day we leave Victoria for New South Wales. It opens at the Paynesville ferry with an early walk among the koalas of Raymond Island, then takes in Metung Hot Springs and a run of cabin and cottage inspections around Lakes Entrance. After a casual lunch at Orbost and the drive through Croajingolong National Park, the group reaches Eden, the first town over the border, by evening.
It is just after 7am, and barely light, when we check out and make a short walk from our Paynesville motel to the ferry to cross the McMillan Strait to Raymond Island in a couple of minutes. “The crossing runs about 200 metres, the service departs roughly every twenty minutes, and foot passengers travel free”, explains Paul and Anthony from Sydney Melbourne Touring.
Raymond Island sits in the Gippsland Lakes and is known for its koalas. Around 300 are thought to live among the gums on an island some six kilometres long, and Parks Victoria calls it one of the few places in the state where a sighting is close to certain! A local koala trail, a loop of about two kilometres, begins at the ferry landing and returns to it. We follow it through the village beside the terminal, then into the bush, and find our first koala within minutes, asleep in the fork of a tree. Over the next hour we count a good dozen !
The koalas are not the only wildlife. Kangaroos graze on the lawns in front of the houses, untroubled by passers-by, “and the island also shelters wallabies, echidnas and more than 50 bird species”, Paul says. The mood is quiet and residential. There are no shops, the land is managed jointly by Parks Victoria and the Gunaikurnai Traditional Owners.
Back across the strait at 8:10 am, breakfast is at Ginny's Place, a nice café on the Paynesville Esplanade that faces the water next to the ferry. It opens at 7am and serves all-day breakfast and lunch, with indoor and glassed-in outdoor tables looking onto the McMillan Strait, a practical first stop before the drive east.
We leave Paynesville at 9am and reach Metung Hot Springs three quarters of an hour later. The site climbs a hillside above Lake King, on the Gippsland Lakes, and was developed by the team behind the Mornington Peninsula's Peninsula Hot Springs with East Gippsland operators Rachel and Adrian Bromage.
It opened in late 2022 on the grounds of a thermal site that had closed in the 1990s. “The water is drawn from a well some 500 metres down and reaches about 45 degrees at the source”, says Mike Roncha, general manager of Metung Hot Springs. It is mineralised, and bathers should expect the sulphur smell that comes sometime with it”. It was not the case today, and the air was nice and pure. “The pools, Mike adds, are still and naturally heated rather than jet baths, in the manner of traditional hot-spring bathing”.
The accommodation we inspect with Mike is glamping: 10 safari-style tents set on the hillside or beside the lagoon. Each has a king four-poster bed, an ensuite bathroom, heating, and tea and coffee facilities, with private geothermal bathing barrels on the deck that run with thermal water through the day. Stays are adults only, two guests to a tent, and packages include a welcome drink, breakfast delivered to the tent, and access to the bathing site.
Then … we bathe! The pools vary in depth and temperature and are spread across the slope, from a lake-view pool to a cold plunge, with bathing barrels set higher up for the view over Lake King. There are also massaging thermal showers, a sauna, a reflexology walk, and a day spa whose treatments draw on native botanicals and Aboriginal wellness rituals the operator credits to Larn'wa Lore. Site bathing runs through the day, and a Lagoon Precinct with a floating sauna has been added more recently. "On a cold June morning, the steam lifting off the water against the lake is the real draw", Mike says. The operator is also redeveloping a nearby former golf course into a linked stay, bathe and golf site, still taking shape at the time of our visit.
At Lakes Entrance we make two quick inspections, the first at Beachcomber Holiday Units. It is a small owner-run property of five self-contained units, looked after by hosts Rebecca and Martin, a short walk from the town centre and close to the Cunninghame Arm footbridge that crosses to the Ninety Mile Beach.
The units run from one to three bedrooms, with full kitchens, laundry, reverse-cycle heating and cooling and supplied linen, which suits couples through to families and small groups who want to self-cater. Parking sits in front of each unit, with off-street space for boats and trailers by arrangement.
The second inspection, Waverley House Cottages, sits a few minutes' drive out of town in a quiet bushland setting. Six self-contained cottages are spread across about 8 acres of native gardens, in one and two-bedroom layouts with king or queen beds.
Several have a wood fire and a private spa bath, and all come with a kitchen, laundry and reverse-cycle air-conditioning, a covered carport and a verandah. There is also a shared spa under a gazebo and a seasonal outdoor pool. King parrots and rainbow lorikeets come and go in the gardens.The cottages are self-catering, with a continental breakfast hamper for the first morning and seafood or supper platters available on request.
By 1:30pm we reach Orbost, in what locals call Snowy River country, for a casual lunch and the day's last inspection. 6 O'Clock Shadows is not a café or restaurant but a whole-house holiday rental. It is a four-bedroom home about five minutes' drive from town, set in mature gardens and lawns, with a wood fire in the lounge and an alfresco patio that looks over the valley.
The host, Lynn, lives nearby and is hands-on, and the four bedrooms are themed on places she has lived and worked, from Orbost to London, Florida and Cabo San Lucas. The name, she says, comes from the way the shadows fall across the valley as the sun sets.
6 O'Clock Shadows can be booked as a whole house, sleeping up to 8, suiting a family or a group taking the entire property . But a couple can also book it (the unused rooms would be locked in that case). It is self-catering, with a breakfast hamper provided for the first morning and extra bedding available on request. As a quiet rural base it puts clients within reach of the Snowy River, the coast at Marlo and the Buchan Caves, and it works best for travellers who want space and seclusion rather than walk-to-everything convenience.
We leave Orbost at 2:30pm and follow the Princes Highway east into the forests of far East Gippsland. This is the country of Croajingolong National Park, a coastal wilderness that, with the adjoining Nadgee Nature Reserve across the state line, forms one of only twelve UNESCO World Biosphere Reserves in Australia.
The highway runs through its forested hinterland rather than its remote heart, which is reached on unsealed roads, and Cann River, a small town on the road, is the place to refuel and break the drive. Somewhere past Genoa we cross from Victoria into New South Wales, and by 5pm we reach Eden.
Eden is the first town of any size on the New South Wales side, a working fishing port of about four thousand people set on a point above Twofold Bay, which is often described as one of the deepest natural harbours in the southern hemisphere. It sits on the Sapphire Coast, roughly halfway between Melbourne and Sydney, with national park to the north and south. The town's identity is bound up with whales. Its Killer Whale Museum keeps the skeleton of Old Tom and tells the story of the orcas that once herded baleen whales into the bay alongside the Yuin people, and later European whalers. Humpback and southern right whales pass on their migration between about May and November.
We check in and rest at Discovery Parks – Eden, a beachside holiday park at Boydtown, on the shore of Twofold Bay about 4 kilometres from the town. Formerly the Twofold Bay Beach Resort, it now runs the full holiday-park range, from powered and unpowered sites to self-contained cabins and two-bedroom villas, with some cabins recently rebuilt that we recommend for international travellers. Our group takes individual cabins, which come with kitchens and verandas, a short walk to the ocean, less than 100 meters to a lovely beach where some of us spotted dolphins the next day at sunrise.
For agents, this reads as a family-leaning property as much as a coastal stopover. There are two outdoor pools, one of them a small water park, along with a heated spa, a tennis court, a playground and a camp kitchen, and the Gravity Eden mountain-bike trails run close by. The newer cabins are the ones to request, since the stock is mixed and older units remain in service. Being a few kilometres out of town, it suits clients with a car.
Dinner is casual and in the cabin. Anthony drives the few kilometres into Eden and brings back takeaway, which we eat at the park as the light goes.
