Victoria

Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, is the capital of Victoria. Melbourne is more stately and “Old World” than Sydney, and offers an exciting mix of ethnicity and the country’s best fashion shopping. Nearby Phillip Island is famous for its Penguin Parade, where hundreds of tiny penguins dash up the beach to their burrows at dusk; and, the historic gold-mining city of Ballarat is not far away. Victoria is also the site of one of Australia’s great road trips, the Great Ocean Road, which stretches for 106km (66 miles) along the southern coast, where the eroded rock towers named the Twelve Apostles stand tall in the sea. Then there’s the inland “high country,” The Man from Snowy River’s stomping ground.