October Lantern Nights at Moonlit Sanctuary Near Melbourne

What the lantern walk covers

You carry a handheld lantern along low timber boardwalks that wind through dry eucalypt bushland. A guide sets the route and the pace. Kangaroos and wallabies graze loose on the open grass beside the path, and you can feed wallabies by hand.

The route passes a walk-through aviary. Look into the low gum forks for a koala. The animals the park keeps are nocturnal natives, awake at the hour the tour runs.

Tickets at the gate and tickets booked ahead

Day entry runs 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., with last entry at 3 p.m. You can buy that at the gate inside those hours.

The night tour is different. Numbers are capped on every departure and booking is essential. Guided tours here run seven days a week, and departures are filling steadily, so book before you drive out from Melbourne.

Day tickets and night tickets are separate. Day entry closes a few hours before the first lantern departure, which leaves a gap to fill nearby.

Groups and the evening discount

The park takes coach, school and private group bookings. Groups of 12 or more get a discount on Monday to Thursday evenings from April to September, excluding school and public holidays. An October visit falls outside that window.

Is it worth it

The $75 tour suits a visitor who wants to watch native animals while they are awake and has an evening free. It asks for an advance booking and 1.5 to two hours on foot in the dark. A day ticket is the cheaper way into the same bushland, and it ends before the night walk begins.

Best time to go in October

October is spring. Wildflowers peak around the month in the bush gardens north of the sanctuary, and the wetland lagoons to the south are at their busiest in nesting season.

Choose a day from Thursday to Sunday for the daylight half of the trip. The antiques shed and the sculpture gallery both close early in the week, and the cable car shuts for maintenance on some Wednesdays.

Arrive in the afternoon. Daylight leaves time for the farm café, the foreshore or a garden walk before the evening departures start.

Filling the gap before a night departure

Sages Cottage Farm & Café (Baxter) sits 10 minutes from the sanctuary gate and is free to wander, open 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily. The café is an old brick-and-weatherboard cottage on a 38-acre farm, with sensory garden beds and chickens and alpacas in post-and-wire paddocks. The farmgate shed sells produce by the crate and jam by the jar. It is a Wallara social enterprise and employs people with disability.

Tooradin Foreshore Reserve (Tooradin) is 12 minutes east and free, a grass reserve on a narrow tidal inlet off Western Port. Pelicans stand on the jetty rail and the boat ramp, near enough to photograph without a long lens. Picnic tables sit on the grass, and a café faces the water from the highway. At low tide the small fishing boats sit on exposed mud, inside a mangrove fringe.

Free bush and wetland watching

Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria – Cranbourne Gardens (Cranbourne) is 15 minutes north, free to enter and free to park, open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day but Christmas. The Australian Garden plants the same bush the animals at Moonlit come from. Walk the raised boardwalks over heathland to the lookout deck above the curved water channels, then stand at the Red Sand Garden, a swirl of red desert sand ringed by silver saltbush. Guided tours and buggy tours can be booked, and the gardens handle coaches.

The Briars is a free 230-hectare public precinct with a visitor centre, a café and picnic lawns with free BBQs. Timber hides look over reed-fringed wetland, and kangaroos and emus share an open paddock inside a predator-proof fence. The white 1840s homestead has a deep verandah, and tours of it are booked through the Shire. Hides open 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily, and the sanctuary closes on high-wind days above 35 km/h, on severe weather warnings and on total fire bans. Ring before you leave.

Coolart Wetlands and Homestead (Somers) is 25 minutes south and free. A glassed observatory looks through one-way glass straight onto a lagoon of black swans, ibis and spoonbills, closer to wild waterbirds than any enclosure gets you. The grounds and hides open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and the red-brick mansion with the square tower opens with its shop on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. A 5 km loop runs past the timber hides. Volunteers run the place.

Devilbend Natural Features Reserve (Hastings) covers 1,000 hectares of quiet water and bush 20 minutes away, free and with no booking. The reserve holds eagles, kangaroos and bush birds. A gravel track runs along the shoreline of a wide still reservoir rimmed with drowned standing dead trees, and an all-access boardwalk reaches a timber viewing and fishing platform. The picnic area has a car park, toilets, BBQs and disabled access. Approach from the Hastings end. The western Tuerong approach is 5 km of badly graded dirt.

Sculpture parks and a high lookout

McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery (Frankston) is 20 minutes from Pearcedale and holds 2,700 works, with more than 100 of them outdoors. Monumental steel and stone pieces stand across 16 hectares of coastal tea-tree bushland and mown lawn, and a long reflecting pool fronts the low modernist gallery building. Entry is $10 adult and $6 concession, free for under-18s and for Frankston residents, paid by cash or card at the welcome booth. It opens Wednesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closes on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and ANZAC Day.

Pt. Leo Estate Sculpture Park is 30 minutes from Pearcedale, with more than 70 major works on 16.5 acres of clipped lawn above ruled vine rows. The flat blue line of Western Port and Bass Strait sits behind them, and a low glass cellar-door building anchors the top of the slope. The sculpture park is $15 adult, $8 concession and $30 family, free for under-12s and free with a restaurant booking. It opens daily 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., last entry 4:30 p.m. It makes a quieter afternoon after a morning of hand-feeding wallabies.

Arthurs Seat Eagle (Dromana) is 35 minutes from the sanctuary and $30 for an adult. Enclosed glass cabins run on a cable above dense gum canopy, with the curve of Dromana beach and Port Phillip Bay directly below, and the summit deck has a café and a lookout rail. October hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at weekends. Tickets are instant, and Carers and Companion Card holders ride free with their companion.

Another animal night and a late soak

Phillip Island Penguin Parade (Phillip Island) is 50 minutes on from Pearcedale, $34 adult, $17 child and $85 family. Little penguins cross the wet sand in tight groups at sunset, watched from a tiered concrete amphitheatre and low timber boardwalks on a dark surf beach, with a big glass-fronted visitor centre behind the dunes. The park advises arriving an hour before, says bookings are essential, and has upgrade works under way on site. You cannot do this and the lantern tour on the same evening.

Maru Koala and Animal Park (Bass Highway) is 35 minutes on toward Phillip Island, $33 for an adult with mini golf included. A raised boardwalk puts you level with the koalas, feed cups are sold for the open kangaroo lawn, and a pirate-themed mini-golf course runs alongside. It opens seven days, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., last entry 4:30 p.m., closed Christmas Day. The park runs no guided after-dark walk.

Peninsula Hot Springs is 45 minutes further west, and it is better kept for a second day. The Bath House opens 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. from $56, with more than 50 bathing experiences, and it is the one thing nearby still trading after a night tour ends. Bathers sit in rock-edged pools among low tea-tree scrub, timber bath houses and barrel saunas stand along the paths, and a spiral of stone steps climbs to a steaming circular pool on the hilltop. Sessions are timed and must be pre-booked. The Spa Dreaming Centre is the adults-only option, at 16 and over.

Market Saturdays and wet weather

Hill & Ridge Community Market (Red Hill) runs on the first Saturday of the month, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., September to May at Red Hill Recreation Reserve. Trestle stalls and marquees spread across a grass showground ringed by tall gums, with produce crates, flower buckets and a coffee van under the green ridge hills. It traded as the Red Hill Community Market before the name changed. The 3 October market has been and gone, and the next run is 7 November. Entry is free and parking is on the showground.

Tyabb Packing House Antiques (Tyabb) is 15 minutes from the sanctuary and the option for a wet afternoon. A corrugated-iron fruit-packing shed is stacked to the roof trusses, with chandeliers hanging in rows over timber dressers and narrow aisles of crockery and signage. Browsing is free and no bookings are taken. It opens Thursday to Sunday and public holidays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closes on Christmas Day and Good Friday.

Planning notes

Book the night tour before you travel, and check the day you have chosen against the places that shut early in the week or in bad weather. See the Melbourne guide and the Melbourne hotel search.