The best weekends here have a shape: one thing each morning, one thing each afternoon, and a lot of sitting down in between. Daylesford and Hepburn Springs are only a few kilometres apart, so you can see a great deal without ever feeling rushed. This is the weekend we'd plan for a friend arriving on a Friday.
Friday: arrive, and slow down
Aim to leave Melbourne by early afternoon; Friday traffic out of the city builds quickly after three. The drive takes about an hour and a half. Drop your bags, walk to the end of the garden while the light goes, and eat close to home. The point of tonight is to stop moving.
Saturday morning: the springs
Take an empty bottle or two to Hepburn Mineral Springs Reserve, protected since 1864. The hand pumps each draw from a different spring (Soda, Sulphur, Locarno, Wyuna and others), and they really do taste different: some faintly fizzy, some sharply metallic. Each pump has a sign about its water. It's free, and the locals bring crates.
From the reserve it's a short walk to Hepburn Bathhouse & Spa, where people have been bathing since 1895. The public pools are mineral water, warmed. If you booked a morning session, go straight in; if not, ask at the desk, as weekday mornings sometimes have space.
Saturday afternoon: a walk, or a crater
For a proper walk, start at Lake Daylesford and follow the Tipperary walking track north through Hepburn Regional Park. Lake to Twin Bridges is about 2.6 km; carry on to Tipperary Springs and Bryces Flat and back and it's a loop of about 14 km, four hours or so. Take care crossing the Midland Highway at Twin Bridges, where there's no pedestrian crossing.
For something gentler, drive fifteen minutes north to Mount Franklin, an extinct volcano whose crater is now a wide lawn ringed with trees. Picnic in the bowl, then walk the 1.7 km track to the rim. Bring your own drinking water. In January, Lavandula at Shepherds Flat is on the way and the lavender is at its peak; check that it's open before you go.
Sunday morning: the market and the hill
The Daylesford Sunday Market has run at the old railway station since 1981, with up to 130 stalls of produce, plants, books and bric-a-brac. Go early, bring cash for the gold-coin entry, and buy something for lunch. If the Daylesford Spa Country Railway is running a railmotor that morning, the departures are from the same platform.
Then climb Wombat Hill. The botanic gardens were laid out from the 1860s and cover about ten hectares; the Pioneers Memorial Tower at the top, opened in 1938, gives you the whole district on a clear day. The Convent Gallery is on the slope below, with exhibitions, a café and its own gardens, though it isn't open every day.
Sunday afternoon: the long way home
Heading back via Ballan, stop at Sailors Falls just south of town, where a short path leads down to a waterfall in a fern gully and there are more spring taps at the top. Going via Woodend instead, turn off at Trentham for the falls, a drop of about 32 metres and the highest single drop in central Victoria, and stay for a late lunch in Trentham before the run home.
Written by Merrow House, a fictional hotel; the places are real and none of them has any relationship with us. Timetables, opening hours and festival dates change, so please check before you travel.
