The Yarra Valley is Melbourne's food garden: just over an hour from the city, a valley of green hills crossed by the Yarra River that produces some of Australia's best sparkling wines and cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. At sunrise, hot-air balloons float over the vineyards; at midday, the cellar doors and country restaurants serve tastings overlooking the rows of vines.
But the valley isn't just about wine. Here you'll find Healesville Sanctuary, one of the country's best Australian wildlife zoos; the chocolate and ice cream of the Yarra Valley Dairy and the Chocolaterie; the historic Puffing Billy steam train in the nearby Dandenong Ranges; and a deep Aboriginal history, tied to the Birrarung River and to Coranderrk station, near Healesville.
This guide covers the Yarra Valley with a practical eye: which wineries to visit and how much tastings cost, what a sunrise balloon flight is like, admission to Healesville Sanctuary, the Puffing Billy train, how to get there by train with myki or on a tour from Melbourne, and why a driver is a good idea if you're going to taste. All with verified prices in Australian dollars and tips for every season.
The Yarra Valley is the ancestral Country of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people, of the Kulin nation, whose name comes from 'wurun' (the manna gum, a eucalyptus common along the river) and 'djeri' (the grub that lives in it). The Yarra River —Birrarung, 'river of mists'— was the centre of their life for thousands of years. After Melbourne was founded in 1835, the valley filled with settlers and vineyards: the first vines were planted as early as 1838, making the Yarra Valley one of the oldest wine regions in Victoria. Near Healesville, in 1863, the Coranderrk Aboriginal station was established, where Wurundjeri leader William Barak led an early and remarkable fight for his people's rights. Phylloxera and changing tastes almost wiped out the vineyards in the 20th century, but from the 1960s-70s the valley was reborn as a fine cool-climate wine region. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The smallest state on the mainland and the richest during the gold rush: land of the Kulin nations, colonised from 1835 around Melbourne, transformed by the gold of Ballarat and Bendigo and by the Eureka rebellion of 1854, seen as the cradle of Australian democracy.
Read the history of Victoria →Some places make no sense on your own; with someone explaining them, they change completely. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 14 activities in Melbourne. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Three are below so you get the idea: tap any of them and they all open.
They depart from Melbourne, 52 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The Yarra Valley takes its name from the river that runs through it, the Yarra, but that river has a much older name: Birrarung, 'river of mists' or 'ever-flowing river', in the Woi-wurrung language. This valley is the ancestral Country of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people, one of the peoples of the Kulin nation of central Victoria, whose land takes in much of present-day Melbourne and the course of the Birrarung.
The name Wurundjeri itself shows how close the people are to the landscape. It comes from 'wurun', the manna gum (Eucalyptus viminalis) that grows along the river, and 'djeri', the grub that lives in or near that tree. In other words, the Wurundjeri are 'the people of the manna gum grub': a people defined by a particular tree and a particular river. For tens of thousands of years they lived off the valley and the Birrarung. They fished, hunted, gathered food and managed the land with fire (firestick farming), following a seasonal cycle guided by deep knowledge of their surroundings.
Like the other Kulin peoples, the Wurundjeri understood the valley through the Dreaming, the order created in the Dreamtime. Bunjil, the creator eagle, is a central figure in their cosmology. The river, the trees, the hills and the animals were part of a web of kinship and law that people had to respect. That bond with the Birrarung and the valley is not a thing of the past: the Wurundjeri are still the Traditional Owners of this land, and they take part in caring for it and in telling its story.
The founding of Melbourne in 1835, on the banks of the Birrarung, changed everything for the valley. Within a few years, settlers had pushed up the river looking for land to graze and farm, and Wurundjeri Country was taken over with no treaty or compensation. Colonisation brought disease, violence and dispossession. The Aboriginal population collapsed within a single generation, yet the Wurundjeri never gave up their connection to the land.
The valley turned out to be excellent for vines. As early as 1838, just three years after Melbourne was founded, the Ryrie brothers planted the first vines at what is now Yering Station, which makes the Yarra Valley one of the oldest wine regions in Australia. By the mid-19th century the region was flourishing. The Victorian gold rush gave it a boost, and so did the arrival of European settlers with a winemaking tradition, among them the Swiss Paul de Castella and Hubert de Castella. Its wines won international awards.
Farms, orchards and towns such as Healesville, Yarra Glen and Coldstream grew up alongside the vineyards. The valley became Melbourne's pantry and a place to get away. But this winemaking boom later took a heavy blow. Phylloxera, the pest that devastated vineyards around the world, and a change in taste towards fortified wines led to almost all the vines being pulled out in the early 20th century. For decades, the Yarra Valley stopped being a wine region.
Near Healesville, the Yarra Valley was the setting for one of the most remarkable chapters in Aboriginal Australian history. In 1863, a group of Wurundjeri and other Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation won permission to settle on a traditional site near where the Yarra meets Badger Creek. They were led by the ngurungaeta (leader) Simon Wonga and his nephew William Barak, and there they founded Coranderrk Aboriginal Station.
Coranderrk was an extraordinary success. Its residents grew wheat, vegetables and hops and raised livestock, and their prize-winning crops held their own against the settlers' produce. It became a thriving, self-sufficient Aboriginal community, largely run by its own people. But that very prosperity, on land others wanted, stirred up hostility from settlers and officials. Through the 1870s and 1880s they tried to close the station and sell off its fertile land.
Faced with that threat, William Barak led a pioneering, peaceful resistance. He organised petitions, delegations and press campaigns. In 1881 he led a group of men on a walk of about 60 km from Coranderrk to Parliament in Melbourne to demand an inquiry. That pressure, from one of the first organised Aboriginal rights campaigns in Australia, led to Coranderrk being declared a permanent reserve in 1884. Barak was also a great artist. The drawings of corroborees and ceremonies he made at Coranderrk preserved and passed on Wurundjeri traditions, and today they are seen as treasures of Australian art.
After half a century with almost no vines, the Yarra Valley came back as a wine region in the 1960s and 1970s. A new generation of winemakers rediscovered the valley's potential for cool-climate wines. Then came landmark wineries such as Domaine Chandon, the Australian arm of the famous Champagne house Moët & Chandon, which bet on the valley's sparkling wine in the 1980s and confirmed what the region could do. Today the Yarra Valley is one of Australia's most prestigious areas for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and sparkling wine.
But the valley is much more than wine. Healesville Sanctuary opened in 1934 as a native wildlife sanctuary and became a leader in protecting Australian animals. Food and drink (chocolate, cheese, cider, craft beer) also played a part, along with experiences such as a sunrise hot-air balloon flight or the Puffing Billy steam train in the nearby Dandenong Ranges. Together they made the Yarra Valley a destination with something for everyone, an hour from Melbourne.
At the same time, recognition of Wurundjeri history and of Coranderrk grew. The site of the old station is now a place of remembrance and pride for the Wurundjeri people. William Barak, artist, leader and activist, is honoured throughout Victoria, and a huge portrait of him even looks out from a building in central Melbourne. Many events in the valley open with a Welcome to Country or an Acknowledgement of Country recognising the Traditional Owners.
Exploring the Yarra Valley today means reading many layers of history in a single landscape. There is the Birrarung River and Wurundjeri Country, Victoria's first vines, Coranderrk's pioneering struggle and the revival of fine wine. Behind every glass of sparkling and every golden vineyard lies that deep history. It's worth knowing so you can enjoy the valley to the full.
