Things to Do in Melbourne in March

The Private Great Ocean Road tour covers one of Australia's most staggering coastal drives in a single day, running southwest from Melbourne past the wave-battered limestone stacks of the Twelve Apostles, the rainforest canopy of the Otway ranges, and the surf breaks around Bells Beach where the Southern Ocean throws cold turquoise walls of water against rust-colored cliffs. This is a private format, so the vehicle stops where you want, at a koala colony drowsing in the fork of a manna gum, or at a lookout where the wind howls up the cliff face carrying the smell of kelp and salt spray. The road itself is the attraction: roughly 150 miles of tight curves with the ocean spread out below, the light in March shifting between golden and pewter as clouds move fast off Bass Strait.

The Relaxed Half Day Yarra Valley Wine Tasting Tour heads east from Melbourne into the rolling green hills where some of Australia's finest cool-climate wines come from, and March catches the valley at the tail of harvest. Expect to taste crisp chardonnay and silky pinot noir poured in cellar doors that smell of oak barrel and damp stone, with views out over vineyard rows where the leaves are just beginning to turn amber at the edges. The half-day format keeps things unhurried. Three or four cellar doors, a cheese platter or a long lunch in between, and the gentle buzz of a morning spent sipping rather than rushing.

The four-hour Private Tour of Melbourne's Iconic Highlights compresses the city's essential character into a single guided morning or afternoon, moving from the Victorian-era arcades of the Block Arcade, where the tessellated tile floors gleam under heritage skylights, through the laneway street-art corridors of Hosier Lane, past Federation Square's angular sandstone-and-zinc facade, and along the Yarra to the Royal Botanic Gardens. A local guide shapes the route around your interests, so it can lean toward Melbourne's coffee culture, its architecture, its Indigenous history along Birrarung Marr, or the market halls of Queen Victoria Market where the shouts of fishmongers and the earthy scent of fresh produce fill the aisles.

The Mornington Peninsula Day Tour heads south from Melbourne to the coastal strip where the city's wealthy have retreated for over a century, and the result is a concentration of exceptional food, wine, hot springs, and beaches packed into a narrow finger of land between Port Phillip Bay and Western Port. The format is private and flexible. Your group decides whether to soak in the geothermal pools at Peninsula Hot Springs, where mineral-rich water steams against the cool March air and eucalyptus branches frame views of the surrounding bush, or to spend the time at cellar doors tasting the peninsula's elegant pinot noir and shiraz, or to walk the clifftop track at Cape Schanck where the Bass Strait wind roars and seabirds wheel above dark volcanic rock.

Airport Transfers via chauffeur car and limousine service handles the logistics of getting between Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport and the city center, a drive of roughly 25 to 40 minutes depending on traffic along the Tullamarine Freeway. The vehicles are late-model sedans and stretch cars, and after a long-haul flight the appeal is immediate: someone meets you at arrivals, handles the luggage, and drives while you sink into leather upholstery and watch the flat outer suburbs give way to the spires and glass towers of the Melbourne skyline. It is a practical luxury, for groups or families arriving with enough luggage that a taxi becomes a geometry problem.

The Mornington Peninsula Gourmet Full-Day Private Tour devotes an entire day to the food and wine of the peninsula, and the difference from a standard sightseeing trip is that eating and drinking are the point, not a side activity. Expect cellar-door tastings of cool-climate pinot and chardonnay at estates where the vines grow in sandy soil within earshot of the sea, a long lunch at a hatted restaurant or a farm-gate table where the bread is baked on-site and the cheese comes from the paddock next door, and stops at artisan producers, olive-oil pressers, berry farms, craft distillers. The scent of rosemary and native pepperberry drifts through farm-gate kitchens, and the pinot noir here carries a savory, earthy quality that reflects the maritime terroir.