Melbourne Hidden Gems: Secret Spots Locals Love

Melbourne's hidden gems are embedded in the logic of the city itself: a place built around laneway discovery, neighbourhood specificity and the conviction that the best things require finding rather than being handed to you. The Bolin Bolin Billabong in Bulleen — a remnant of the Yarra River's original meandering course, now a nature reserve with black swans, water dragons and Aboriginal cultural significance — sits in Melbourne's middle ring suburbs entirely unknown to visitors despite being one of the city's most extraordinary natural spaces. The adjacent Heide Museum of Modern Art, housed in the former farmhouse of Melbourne's pioneering art patronage couple Sunday and John Reed, contains Australia's finest collection of mid-20th century Australian art in a setting of outdoor sculpture gardens that manage to feel both intimate and grand simultaneously.

The suburb of Yarraville has operated as Melbourne's best-kept neighbourhood secret for over a decade, somehow maintaining its village character despite being 20 minutes from the CBD by train — a main street of independent cafés, the Sun Theatre art deco cinema still screening films in its 1930s splendour, and a residential community of young families and creative professionals that gives the suburb the energy of Fitzroy at half the price and none of the self-consciousness. The Maribyrnong River Trail connecting Footscray to Williamstown along the river's western bank is Melbourne's finest urban cycling and walking path — a 10km route through industrial heritage, wetlands, the Flemington Racecourse precinct and the historic maritime town of Williamstown that very few visitors discover despite running through neighbourhoods within 10km of the CBD.

The Nicholas Building on Swanston Street in central Melbourne is the city's most extraordinary open secret: a 1926 office building whose upper floors house over 100 small studios occupied by artists, luthiers, leatherworkers, dressmakers and alternative health practitioners who have maintained a creative community in a heritage commercial building that the property market has somehow not yet converted to apartments. Visitors can simply take the lift to any floor and wander — most studio doors are open during business hours and the occupants are often willing to talk about their work. The Melbourne Observation Deck at Eureka Tower is well-known, but the equally spectacular view from the entirely free 35th floor terrace of the Sofitel Melbourne on Collins Street — a public hotel lobby terrace with 270-degree city views — is used almost exclusively by hotel guests despite being accessible to anyone who walks through the lobby and takes the elevator.