Backpack Victoria

scuba diving

Diving in Victoria, with its wrecks, reefs and drifts, is every bit as good as diving in Australia’s more illustrious northern states.

Dive deep
Portsea is a popular diving spot and less than an hour's drive from Melbourne. Plenty of dive schools offer day and overnight trips, including accommodation. Winter is best for visibility, but you may enjoy yourself and shiver a little less in summer and autumn.

Dive the yellow submarine
Aficionados agree that some of Victoria's best diving spots are around the Mornington Peninsula and Port Phillip Bay, where you can swim alongside sting rays, manta rays, seahorses and dolphins. Port Phillip Heads forms the narrow entrance to Port Phillip Bay, and offers heaps of wrecks and dive sites, including Lonsdale Wall. You can also dive the Yellow Submarine, a J-class submarine that was scuttled outside the heads in the 1920s. Port Phillip Bay itself has some great dives – Popes Eye and Portsea Hole, the most popular dives in Victoria, are both renowned for their vast array of marine life.

See dolphins flip and fly
Dolphin and seal watching begins in spring, when you can see wild bottlenose dolphins flip and fly in their natural surrounds along the shores of the Mornington Peninsula. Dolphin swims call for less experience than scuba diving and have been known to hook many a traveller on the pleasures of the sea.

Search shipwrecks
In Victoria’s west, the Shipwreck Coast harbors dozens of turn-of-the-century wrecks – rotting hulls, masts, keelsons, lifeboat davits, interesting relics like that. Torquay, Port Campbell and Portland are popular diving spots along the Great Ocean Road, while Wilsons Promontory, Mallacoota and Kilcunda along Victoria’s east coast are the bee’s knees for diving among kelp beds, marine life, boulders and swim-throughs.

Learn from the experts
Dive centres providing boat and shore dives along Victoria’s coastline are scattered in and around Melbourne. For the best dive access, base yourself in the beachfront towns of Portsea, Sorrento or Queenscliff. Scuba-diving courses are conducted at numerous diving centres throughout Victoria. The state also has a number of PADI five-star dive centres, where you’ll receive top-class training – just remember, a medical certificate is required before undertaking a dive course.

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