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Things to Do in Nillumbik: Melbourne’s Art-Filled Green Wedge Escape
The green-wedge day trip for people who have done Daylesford, done the Dandenongs, and want somewhere closer, artsier and less obvious.
Nillumbik is one of Melbourne’s easiest day trips for art, wine, markets and bushland, stretching north-east through Eltham, Hurstbridge, St Andrews and Kangaroo Ground. Within an hour of the CBD, you can visit Montsalvat, browse St Andrews Market, taste local wine, walk river and bush trails, or settle in for lunch in one of its village centres.
This is where Melbourne starts to fray beautifully into bushland. Footpaths thin out, river gums take over and roads bend around paddocks instead of blocks. Eltham still carries its artistic mythology; Hurstbridge suits a long lunch; St Andrews wakes early on market mornings; Kangaroo Ground opens onto big sky and wine country. Montsalvat may be the obvious starting point, but Nillumbik rewards anyone who keeps going.
In This Guide
Why Nillumbik Is Worth the Drive
Some weekends call for putting a little green between yourself and Melbourne. Nillumbik makes that remarkably easy. Houses disappear behind gums, roads curl past paddocks and somewhere along the way the city seems to fall away altogether. Its protected Green Wedge has helped preserve a landscape with creativity running deep through it, from Montsalvat and artists’ studios to Saturday markets and small producers down country roads. There is no great need to cover ground. Browse for a while, walk beside the river, find somewhere excellent for lunch and leave the rest of the afternoon undecided. An hour from Melbourne has rarely felt so satisfyingly far away.
Montsalvat & Eltham
Eltham has been attracting artists for well over a century, and somehow the creative streak escaped the galleries and got into the bricks. Walter Withers painted these landscapes in the early 1900s; Justus Jörgensen gathered artists around him a generation later; Alistair Knox followed with post-war houses built from mudbrick, timber and a deep respect for the bush around them. Even now, Eltham refuses to look completely suburban. Rooflines disappear behind gums, handmade walls turn up on ordinary streets and the landscape still gets a say in how the place looks.
Montsalvat: Still Making Things
Montsalvat looks as though a French hill village took a wrong turn and ended up among the eucalypts. That impression is no accident. Jörgensen drew on the villages of France and the Gothic cathedrals of France and Spain, then built his version from Eltham clay and stone, salvaged windows and pieces of demolished Melbourne. The Great Hall’s Gothic windows came from the old Empire Buildings in the city; elsewhere, former wharf timbers became structural beams. European in silhouette, certainly, but assembled with a very Australian instinct for making use of what was at hand.
The surprise is how little it behaves like a monument. Australia’s oldest continuously operating artist community still has artists working behind the doors visitors wander past, alongside five galleries, 20 studios and a ceramic centre spread through 34 heritage buildings across 12 acres. Montsalvat is historic, yes, but crucially, it is still making things.
7 Hillcrest Avenue, Eltham
What’s On at Montsalvat Now
The Constant Flow: Tokyo-based sculptor Wang Xiyu, 20 August to 12 September
Ashes & Bones: Phillip HOWe and Gautam Jhanjee, 20 August to 13 September
Eltham High School Centenary Exhibition: 21 August to 13 September
Spring Open Studio Day: 13 September
The Open Studio Day may be the best way to understand Montsalvat: not as a beautiful relic, but as somewhere clay is still being thrown, paintings sit half-finished and somebody has probably left a tool on a bench. Book tickets here.
Sitchu Tip: Make it a Friday. The Meeting Pool slips into wine-bar mode from 4pm to 8pm, and once a month Open Gallery Night keeps the doors open until 8pm for new exhibitions and free entry. Art, old stone and a glass of wine while the last light catches Eltham’s gums.
Things to Do in Eltham Beyond Montsalvat
The Eltham Library has its own Community Gallery, currently showing Shaping Selves through 13 September, with work by artists from Araluen Centre exploring people and the natural world. Outside is a much better sort of local oddity: a hand-cranked Listening Post installed in 2025. Give the handle a turn and Eltham starts talking, with stories about Alistair Knox Park, early farms, the old trestle bridge and the Diamond Creek valley. No app to download, no screen to stare at. Just a little winding handle and the neighbourhood telling you what happened here.
From there, the Little Eltham Heritage Walk links more than 20 sites, and refreshed Heidelberg School Artist Trail markers return to landscapes Walter Withers once painted. Alistair Knox Park picks up another piece of the story, threading bush planting, wetlands, sculpture and exposed timber through the centre of town in honour of the designer and builder who helped make mudbrick part of Eltham’s visual language.
Even breakfast comes with an architectural footnote, with Second Home occupying a former Alistair Knox-designed factory among the gums.
On Sunday mornings, Eltham Farmers’ Market fills with Victorian growers and makers selling their own produce rather than goods bought in for resale; the fourth Sunday of the month also brings a food swap. Nearby, Eltham Bookshop even keeps a lively calendar of author talks, book clubs, workshops and dinners.
Montsalvat might be Eltham’s most famous expression of all this, but the creative life was never confined to its stone walls. It found its way into houses, parks, bookshelves, market stalls and studios, and somehow still feels less like heritage than simply the way Eltham does things.
Hurstbridge, Kangaroo Ground & St Andrews
Past Eltham, Nillumbik changes scale. Shopfronts thin out, paddocks widen and horses begin appearing behind fences. Hurstbridge, Kangaroo Ground and St Andrews sit close enough to string together in an afternoon, but each wears country life differently. Hurstbridge gathers around its village centre; Kangaroo Ground opens onto hills, vineyards and an enormous amount of sky; St Andrews retains an old countercultural streak;
Hurstbridge: The End of the Line, In the Best Way
Hurstbridge has the pleasing finality of a train line that simply stops. Step off at the terminus and within a few hundred metres, the bush begins asserting itself. The 17.3-kilometre Diamond Creek Trail runs south through Wattle Glen and Diamond Creek to Eltham, following the creek past wetlands where platypus still live. Dawn or dusk gives you the better odds of spotting one.
The village rewards a bit of nosing around. Its 3.6-kilometre heritage trail passes 30 historic sites, while Hurstbridge Op Shop spills second-hand finds from the shopfront onto the verandah, through an old house and into the garden. Check the boot has room.
Then there is the Edible Hub, with wicking beds, a seed library, Food Is Free table, produce swaps and a repair cafe. People are actually swapping zucchinis here. Afterward, wander through Fergusons Paddock and pick the creek back up.
Hurstbridge’s beauty is how little of it feels arranged for your benefit. The town is simply getting on with things, and you’re welcome to come along.
Hurstbridge Wattle Festival
On Sunday 30 August 2026, Hurstbridge emerges from winter for its annual Wattle Festival. Steam trains return to the line, musicians spread through the village, vintage cars roll in and market stalls take over the streets. Best of all is the wonderfully named Hursty Hustle, a 3.5-kilometre run from Wattle Glen in which participants attempt to beat the steam train to Hurstbridge.
The festival began in 2004 and has become one of the town’s great markers of spring. Few things announce the end of winter more cheerfully than racing a steam train through wattle country.
Kangaroo Ground: Follow the Sky
Kangaroo Ground opens everything out again. From Kangaroo Ground War Memorial Park, the stone memorial tower sits high on Garden Hill with long views across farmland and bush and, on a clear day, back towards Melbourne.
Vines begin appearing across the surrounding hills too, an early clue that Nillumbik’s wine country has begun. It is a landscape best absorbed without trying too hard to turn it into an itinerary: old buildings, local wine, roads cresting into views and long sections of sky.
St Andrews: A Little More Wild Around the Edges
St Andrews is looser around the edges. Once called Queenstown, the village has long attracted artists, growers, musicians and people with a healthy suspicion of overly tidy weekends. Mudbrick buildings sit among the gums, small traders occupy handmade spaces, the Saturday market keeps the village humming, and its iconic pub keeps live music, open fires and the occasional vintage car in the mix.
Melbourne is barely an hour away. Culturally, St Andrews can feel several decades and one very winding road removed. Perhaps that is the point. Across these villages and hills, Nillumbik reveals itself far better than any neat definition of the Green Wedge ever could.
St Andrews Market
Some markets exist to replenish the fridge. St Andrews Community Market has spent more than half a century doing something stranger and more interesting. Held every Saturday from 9am to 2pm, the market dates to 1971 and grew from the alternative culture gathering around St Andrews at the time. Local legend has musician Wally Johnson, co-writer of Give Me a Home Among the Gum Trees, crossing from the pub to busk outside the community hall; from there, a market began. At its busiest, more than 100 stalls spread through the reserve.
The ingredients have changed over the decades, but not the spirit. Organic vegetables sit beside pottery, sourdough, flowers, vintage clothes, beeswax candles, herbal teas, jewellery, plants and the occasional object whose intended purpose may require a conversation with its maker. Coffee and chai steam through the morning air. Dogs appear. Someone is inevitably carrying a basket far more beautiful than anything they intended to buy.
This is not one of those regional markets that feels like a metropolitan design fair relocated to a paddock. There is still earth under its fingernails. Produce comes from nearby growers; the handmade stalls can be genuinely idiosyncratic; recycled and pre-loved things sit happily beside the new. More than 50 years on, growers, craftspeople and local eccentrics remain part of the scenery.
Once the bags are full, wander the mudbrick shops across the road, then take the unnecessarily pretty route onwards through Kangaroo Ground. Saturday has already done enough.
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Drink Local on the Nillumbik Wine Trail
Melbourne’s wine map begins earlier than many realise. Before the better-known cellar doors further east, vines are already climbing the hills around Kangaroo Ground, Panton Hill, St Andrews, Cottles Bridge, Smiths Gully and Arthurs Creek. Nillumbik has 14 wineries across the shire, many small enough that the person pouring may also have pruned, picked and made the wine. Cellar doors sit along bush roads, dogs wait under tables and winemakers still have time to talk through what grows best where.
Panton Hill, With a Little Southern European Drama
Then there is Panton Hill Vineyard & Winery, which looks as though somebody became homesick for Europe halfway through the Australian bush and decided to build through it.
Winemaker and former earth-science academic Teunis Kwak bought the property as an undeveloped bush block in 1973 and spent decades shaping it with his wife Dorothy. Sandstone from the property, recycled timbers, Welsh slate once used as ship ballast and stone from the same Grampians quarry as Parliament House found their way into the buildings. Courtyards, heavy stone walls and a large winter fireplace now surround estate wines ranging from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to eccentric fortified releases aged for years in barrel.
Saturday is cellar-door day. Order a tasting, add homemade pizza and cured olives, and let the architecture derail the schedule.
145 Manuka Road, Panton Hill
Follow the Small Producers
Gary and Louise Trist planted Pinot Noir and Shiraz on their St Andrews property in 1991, later adding Sangiovese and bringing son Joel into the family winemaking fold. Today, Buttermans Track Wines works with organic viticulture and a gravity-flow winery built to keep intervention to a minimum: hand-picked fruit, indigenous yeast, no fining or filtration and very little unnecessary handling.
There is plenty worth pouring, from Pinot Noir and Syrah to Riesling, Chardonnay and pét-nat, but the Sangiovese feels particularly at home here; the Trists were among the earlier Yarra Valley growers to plant it. Cellar-door tastings run from midday to 5pm on weekends, best stretched out with sunshine among the vines and a local cheese platter booked ahead.
75 Yow Yow Creek Road, St Andrews
Find the View at Smiths Gully
The deck at Nillumbik Estate looks across the vines towards the Kinglake Ranges, which settles the question of lunch fairly quickly. Winemaker John Tregambe draws on techniques passed through his Italian family, working with Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo, Chardonnay, Shiraz and sparkling, alongside pizzas and antipasto made with local produce.
Weekend cellar-door visits sometimes extend into barrel tastings or vineyard tours, turning a glass into a lesson in what grows up here and why. The scale remains familial because it is.
195 Clintons Road, Smiths Gully
One to Watch Right Now
Wedgetail Estate has entered a new chapter in Cottles Bridge under owners Adam and Jacky. The small vineyard specialises in cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, made inside a rammed-earth winery using Burgundian techniques. For an August 2026 visit, the important news is its freshly refurbished cellar door, now back for weekend tastings.
Wine is made within sight of the tasting room, grazing platters land on the table and the vines are right outside. Nillumbik wears this scale beautifully.
40 Hildebrand Road, Cottles Bridge
Time It for Nillumbik Hills Open Cellars
Twice a year, these individual little worlds become a trail. Nillumbik Hills Open Cellars runs in winter and spring, with participating family wineries opening for tastings, food, live music and the chance to meet the person who made what is in the glass. In 2026, the event marks its 25th year; the spring edition lands on 17–18 October.
It suits Nillumbik that its wine festival still feels like visiting people rather than venues. Choose a few cellar doors, appoint a driver and leave space between them for the roads themselves.
Held every June and October
Best Walks & Nature in Nillumbik
The walks range from sealed creek trails to bush tracks through remnant woodland, old gold diggings and open country around Christmas Hills. Platypus inhabit local waterways and powerful owls breed among the old trees. Habitat shapes the experience here, from the hollows overhead to the water moving beside the track, and a few hours among it changes the temperature of the day.
Follow the Diamond Creek Trail
The Diamond Creek Trail follows its namesake waterway for 17.3 sealed kilometres between Eltham and Hurstbridge, passing through Diamond Creek and Wattle Glen along the way. The relatively flat shared path makes an excellent choose-your-own-adventure walk or ride: go as far as your legs fancy, then catch the Hurstbridge Line home.
Keep half an eye on the creek as you go. Platypus still live along this waterway, with dawn and dusk in autumn and spring considered the best times for a possible sighting. On Sundays, there’s an even more charming reason to finish around Eltham Lower Park. The volunteer-run Diamond Valley Railway sends miniature steam, electric and diesel trains through the bushland from 11am. A long creekside walk followed by a ride on a tiny train? Hard to argue with that.
Eltham to Hurstbridge
Spend an Hour at Edendale Farm
Just off the Diamond Creek Trail, Edendale Community Environment Farm makes an easy detour for walkers, cyclists and families. Sheep, alpacas, goats, ponies and chooks share the property with vegetable gardens, sustainability displays and an Indigenous plant nursery stocked with locally propagated tubestock.
Wander through the farm, buy a handful of chicken feed, browse the nursery, then grab a coffee at Cafe Eden overlooking the grounds. Nothing here asks for much planning, which is rather the point. An hour disappears very pleasantly.
30 Gastons Road, Eltham
Go Bigger at Sugarloaf Reservoir
By Christmas Hills, the horizon has widened. Sugarloaf Reservoir Park wraps around an enormous body of water, with tracks through grassland and remnant dry forest and lookouts across the reservoir towards the hills. Wedge-tailed eagles, echidnas, wallabies and kangaroos are among the wildlife recorded here.
Easy walks circle the picnic areas, while the 18-kilometre reservoir walk requires a more decisive commitment. Saddle Dam is good for staring at water; Ridge has barbecues and shelter. Dogs are not permitted and the gates close each evening, so check the hours before setting out.
Sugarloaf Reservoir Park
Read the Landscape at Gawa Reserve
Some walks teach the eye to notice more. At Gawa Reserve in Kangaroo Ground, the self-guided Gawa Wurundjeri Resource Trail loops for just 340 metres around Watsons Creek, with markers explaining Wurundjeri use of local plants and Country for food, medicine, fibre, shelter and tools. Manna gums, Lomandra and wombat burrows start to read differently once you know what they meant here.
The trail was launched in 2001 by Wurundjeri Elder Jim Wandin with the Nillumbik Reconciliation Group and council. It is a small walk carrying a much larger history: this landscape was known, cared for and lived with for thousands of years before anyone called it a Green Wedge.
Kangaroo Ground, Victoria
Wander the Panton Hill Bushland Reserves
Seven reserves make up the Panton Hill Bushland Reserve System, protecting around 140 hectares of remnant habitat between Smiths Gully and Watsons Creek. Their Woi-wurrung names reference species found here, including Bunjil for Wedge-tailed Eagle, Gawa for Echidna and Yanggai for Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo.
Routes range from a few hundred metres to around 12 kilometres through Box-Ironbark woodland and creek lines. Powerful owls and brush-tailed phascogales are among the threatened species associated with this habitat corridor, relying on the hollows that form only in old trees.
Panton Hill Bushland Reserve
Walk From Smiths Gully to St Andrews
The walk into St Andrews begins opposite an old goldfields cemetery. From Peter Franke Reserve, the Smiths Gully to St Andrews Nature History Trail follows the creek for around three kilometres return through the former Caledonia Gully diggings, past traces of the mining landscape and the remains of a government gold-crushing battery.
Across the road, Queenstown Cemetery dates to the gold-rush settlement that preceded present-day St Andrews. More than 380 burials are recorded here, though many graves, including those of itinerant and Chinese miners, were never marked. Time the walk for Saturday morning and St Andrews Market waits at the other end.
Peter Franke Reserve, 75 Smiths Gully Road, Smiths Gully
Find One Tree Hill
The name suggests a lookout; One Tree Hill Reserve is better understood as 143 hectares of forest and gullies around the upper reaches of Happy Valley Creek. Tracks disappear beneath eucalypts through country once dug for gold, now significant habitat for powerful owls, brush-tailed phascogales and common dunnarts.
There is little choreography to a walk here. Follow the trail, watch the canopy and let Smiths Gully do the rest.
290 One Tree Hill Road, Smiths Gully
Best Places to Eat & Drink in Nillumbik
Nillumbik eats as it lives: close to its growers, fond of people who make things themselves and uninterested in behaving like an extension of inner Melbourne. A morning can begin with eggs inside an Alistair Knox building, lunch beside the Kangaroo Ground hills and dinner at an eight-seat restaurant sourcing from farms almost close enough to point at.
Second Home
Before anyone was ordering flat whites here, Second Home was an Alistair Knox-designed light-bulb factory. Built in 1973, the brick warehouse still has the volume of its industrial life, now opened to gum trees through great sheets of glass. Breakfast ranges from golden folded eggs with goat’s cheese to smashed avocado with Vegemite salt; lunch gets into prawn spaghettini and Wagyu burgers. On weekends, the old factory even dresses up for high tea.
21 Brougham Street, Eltham
Greasy Zoe’s
Eight seats, two people and a menu that can practically name everyone who helped grow it. At Greasy Zoe’s, Zoe Birch cooks while Lachlan Gardner runs the room, building each tasting menu around the week’s harvest and last season’s ferments, pickles and preserves. Native-grass flour from Bruce Pascoe-founded Black Duck Foods might become a pastry or doughnut; seafood stays on the Good Fish Project green list. Only 32 diners make it through the door each week.
Sitchu Tip: Bookings are released at 9am on the first of each month for the following month.
Shop 3/850 Heidelberg-Kinglake Road, Hurstbridge
Bar Conexão
By 8pm, Bar Conexão looks as though everyone in Eltham has quietly agreed not to go home yet. Bottles crowd the shelves, art climbs the walls and the menu understands that one plate is merely reconnaissance. Anchovy toast comes slicked with truffle mayo and chilli; triple-cream cheese meets hot honey; rare roast beef gets horseradish crème and chimichurri. Cocktails hold their own beside the wine, and yes, much of the art is for sale. Order one plate and you’re kidding yourself.
4/10–18 Arthur Street, Eltham
Naught Distilling
You could pass Naught Distilling a dozen times and never guess what is happening behind the roller doors. The Peel Street factory frontage opens into low light, velvet booths, jazz and a copper still holding court over the room. Gin is distilled on site, but the bar is the reason to stay: Martinis arrive tableside, while cacao, miso, pistachio, sage, yuzu and chilli turn up elsewhere on the list. Eltham keeps one very good secret in an industrial estate.
Factory 2/32 Peel Street, Eltham
Fondata 1872
Built in 1872 from handmade bricks fired with clay dug on site, the former Weller’s Hotel once served travellers heading towards Victoria’s goldfields. Today, Fondata 1872 keeps the old building busy with house-made pasta, ricotta gnocchi, slow-cooked lamb and tiramisu della nonna beside the heritage fireplace. Fridays stretch into Aperitif Hour, weekends have their own afternoon menu, and through August, Victorian Sher Wagyu appears four ways.
150 Eltham-Yarra Glen Road, Kangaroo Ground
A Boy Named Sue
Saturday in St Andrews has a natural second act. Across from the market, A Boy Named Sue fires sourdough pizzas in the courtyard, pours local wine and keeps the record collection close at hand. Weekday lunch now includes substantial subs filled with porchetta, schnitzel or wood-roasted vegetables, while community fundraisers, DJs and wine-list takeovers keep appearing on the calendar. It has been here since 2011 and still feels connected to village life rather than parachuted in for weekend traffic.
87 Burns Street, St Andrews
Piccolo Meccanico
Piccolo Meccanico is tiny enough to miss and beloved enough that Diamond Creek never does. For 14 years, this espresso bar has poured seriously good specialty coffee to a procession of locals, cyclists, walkers and dogs, many greeted like old friends. Muffins sit on the counter, leads loop around chairs and conversations travel between tables while the coffee keeps coming. It’s enough to make you want to uproot your life and move to this side of Melbourne.
57 Chute Street, Diamond Creek
Best Galleries, Artists & Makers in Nillumbik
Nillumbik has always made things with its hands. Clay becomes pots, timber furniture, copper plates disappear beneath ink. Across Eltham and the bush beyond, studios, artist colonies and mudbrick buildings reveal how closely creative work is tied to landscape. Even the shopping feels personal. Things still have fingerprints.
See What Nillumbik Is Making Now
Set among red gums in Watsons Creek, Gallery 7six5 gives Nillumbik’s contemporary artists a permanent home. Owners Benny Archer and Lisa Ferrari fill the old barn with work made exclusively by artists who live or work in the shire, spanning painting, sculpture, glass, ceramics and textiles. Archer’s working studio sits inside too, so a gallery visit can turn into a conversation about process.
Sitchu Tip: It is open Friday to Sunday, no special weekend required.
765D Eltham-Yarra Glen Road, Watsons Creek
Buy a Pot From Peter Accadia
Peter Accadia has been working with clay for more than 50 years, and his Eltham studio-gallery still holds the breadth of that practice. High-fired stoneware and porcelain sit alongside one-off forms, shaped by Japanese ceramic traditions and experiments with Australian natural materials. His saggar firings have used everything from shells and wood to mushrooms and spent grapes. Visitors can browse and buy from the studio most days, though an appointment is wise before setting out.
1398 Main Road, Eltham
Time It for Nillumbik Artists Open Studios
Nillumbik’s version of a gallery crawl requires a car and a willingness to follow increasingly beautiful roads. Nillumbik Artists Open Studios returns across 14–15 and 21–22 November 2026, when more than 30 artists open 24 studios from Eltham and Research to Kangaroo Ground, Cottles Bridge, Hurstbridge and St Andrews. Ceramics, glass, sculpture, printmaking, painting, textiles, woodworking and even musical-instrument making are all part of the trail.
The pleasure is seeing work before it has been separated from the place that produced it. Pots sit near kilns. Paintings share walls with sketches and half-finished thoughts. Tools remain where they were put down. See the room, light and landscape in which something was made, and the bowl that comes home with you already has a story attached.
Find Dunmoochin in the Bush
Cottles Bridge has been drawing artists into the bush since the early 1950s, when painter Clifton Pugh and a small creative community began settling here. From that circle grew The Dunmoochin Foundation, one of Victoria’s longest-running artist communities, with Fred Williams and Mirka Mora among the artists associated with its history.
Today, six residences and three studios sit across the bushland, supporting artists and researchers for residencies that can extend to two years. There are printmaking facilities, working studios and the Long Gallery, but this remains a place for making rather than casual sightseeing. The grounds are private outside appointments and public programs, making Open Studios a rare chance to see a creative community still carrying on the work Dunmoochin was established to protect.
105 Barreenong Road, Cottles Bridge
Learn the Old Arts at Baldessin Studio
The story of Baldessin Press & Studio begins in the 1970s, when George and Tess Baldessin built a bluestone studio among the St Andrews bush. George, now regarded as one of Australia’s significant printmakers and sculptors, died in 1978 at just 39. The studio remained unused for 23 years before being revived as an open-access printmaking space in his memory.
Photogravure, zinc-plate etching, artist books and drypoint fill the 2026 workshop calendar, with ink, paper and old presses still central to the practice as bushland reaches almost to the door. Visits are by appointment, so this one takes a little planning. Nearly half a century after Baldessin last worked here, new hands are still learning their way around the press.
90 Shaftesbury Avenue, St Andrews
Follow What Is Happening at Garambi Baanj
Garambi Baanj, also known as Laughing Waters, sits on a culturally significant stretch of Birrarung used by Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people for gathering and food harvesting for tens of thousands of years. Traditional iuk (eel) traps remain in the river, while the surrounding conservation land holds homes linked to Eltham figures including architect Alistair Knox, landscape designer Gordon Ford and photographer Sue Ford.
Today, those buildings form part of an artist residency run by InPlace in partnership with the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation. Artists, writers, filmmakers and researchers live and work here for a time, responding to Country, ecology and the long history held by the site.
It is not generally open for casual visits, so watch for talks, workshops and other public programs throughout the year.
Buy Straight From the Makers in Eltham
The creative output of Eltham gets a shopfront of sorts at Eltham Locals Makers, Artists & Designers Market, gathering more than 70 artists and makers beneath one roof. The next market lands on 22 November 2026, with jewellery, clothing, homewares, art and design sold directly by the people behind them.
It pairs neatly with Open Studios, which runs across the same November weekends. Spend the morning peering into working spaces, then see what the broader community has been stitching, throwing, painting and hammering together. Few souvenir purchases have such a short supply chain.
Stop at a Farm Gate
The maker trail does not have to end with art. Out on Flat Rock Road in Hurstbridge, 800 Trees produces extra-virgin olive oil from a small rainwater-fed grove planted around two decades ago. Frantoio, corregiola and manzanilla olives are cold-pressed and filtered only once; resident alpacas handle security and, less ceremoniously, fertilising duties.
Oil can be bought from the farm gate by arrangement. The day can end with a print, a ceramic cup, perhaps something linen, and a bottle of cloudy local olive oil rolling gently in the back seat.
The best things collected here tend to retain a little of where they came from. That might be Nillumbik’s real souvenir.
FAQs
Nillumbik begins around 45 minutes north-east of Melbourne, with most of its key villages reachable within an hour of the CBD by car. Eltham sits closest to the city, while Hurstbridge, St Andrews, Kangaroo Ground and Panton Hill take you further into the Green Wedge.
The best things to do in Nillumbik include visiting Montsalvat, exploring Eltham’s arts and architecture, browsing St Andrews Market, tasting local wine around Kangaroo Ground and Panton Hill, walking the Diamond Creek Trail and visiting the studios, galleries and makers scattered throughout the shire.
Yes, although a car opens up far more of the region. Eltham, Diamond Creek and Hurstbridge are connected to Melbourne by the Hurstbridge train line, making them easy day trips. St Andrews, Kangaroo Ground, wineries, farm gates and many bush reserves are considerably easier to reach by car.
Saturday is arguably the best introduction to Nillumbik. St Andrews Community Market runs in the morning, many cellar doors open across the wine country and the villages are at their liveliest. Sunday is another strong choice, particularly for Eltham Farmers’ Market, winery lunches and a slower wander through Montsalvat.
Nillumbik is its own municipality and Green Wedge rather than simply another part of the Yarra Valley. Its eastern hills meet the broader Yarra wine country, but the character is distinct: smaller cellar doors, artist communities, bushland villages and an identity shaped as much by Eltham and St Andrews as by vineyards.
For breakfast, Second Home pairs an Alistair Knox building with one of Eltham’s strongest cafe menus. Greasy Zoe’s in Hurstbridge is the destination dinner, Fondata 1872 suits a long lunch in Kangaroo Ground, while Bar Conexão and Naught Distilling make a strong case for staying in Eltham after dark.
The Diamond Creek Trail is the most accessible place to start, linking Eltham with Diamond Creek, Wattle Glen and Hurstbridge. For more bushland, explore Sugarloaf Reservoir Park, the Panton Hill Bushland Reserve System, Gawa Wurundjeri Resource Trail or the shorter nature and history trails around Smiths Gully.
Start with breakfast in Eltham and a morning at Montsalvat, then head north for lunch in Hurstbridge or Kangaroo Ground. Spend the afternoon at a cellar door, on a bush trail or browsing St Andrews Market on Saturday, before looping back through the hills towards Melbourne as the light begins to soften.
Loved our guide to Nillumbik? Keep following the vines. The Yarra Valley waits just beyond the hills, with long lunches, cellar doors and some of Victoria’s most beautiful wine country. Or widen the map entirely with our guide to the best wine regions in Victoria, from volcanic western plains to cool-climate valleys, coastal vineyards and the High Country.
