Victoria is small but packed: Melbourne with cafés, street art and lots of jobs, plus the Great Ocean Road, the Grampians, Wilsons Promontory and Phillip Island, all within a few hours. Here you'll find all 5 places with 57 checked spots, the climate, jobs and the matching road trips.
Melbourne is Australia's café and culture capital and, after Sydney, the second big starting point for working holiday makers: lots of barista and hospitality jobs, free trams in the city centre, street art, markets and penguins at the city beach.
The Great Ocean Road runs about 240 kilometres along Victoria's coast from Torquay, past surf beaches, rainforest and the limestone stacks of the Twelve Apostles.
Phillip Island is about two hours south-east of Melbourne and famous for the Penguin Parade: every evening hundreds of little penguins come ashore from the sea.
The Grampians, Gariwerd in the local Aboriginal language, are a sandstone range about three hours west of Melbourne: rocky outcrops with wide views, waterfalls and kangaroos on the meadows of Halls Gap in the evening.
Wilsons Promontory, “the Prom” for short, is the southern tip of the Australian mainland and one of Victoria's most popular national parks: white beaches between granite boulders, wombats at the campground and hiking trails across the whole peninsula.
All 57 spots at a glance: open the Victoria map.
Victoria is cooler than the north, and Melbourne is known for four seasons in one day. In summer (December to February) 25 degrees is normal, with the odd day above 40; in winter (June to August) it's more like 13 to 15 degrees and often rainy. October to April is best for the Great Ocean Road, the Grampians and Wilsons Promontory. Winter on the coast is windy and cold, but whales pass Warrnambool from June to September.
Melbourne has a big job market in cafés, hospitality and construction, and barista experience helps a lot here. The city doesn't count towards the 88 days. The harvest areas are in the north: Sunraysia around Mildura and Robinvale with grapes, stone fruit and citrus almost all year, peaking in January, and the Goulburn Valley around Shepparton and Cobram with apples, pears and stone fruit (February and March). Check the postcode with Home Affairs before you start a job.
Minimum wage, tax, your rights and the harvest calendar for all of Australia are on Working in Australia.
Yes, especially for jobs in cafés and hospitality. The city is a bit cheaper than Sydney and has lots of hostels in the CBD and in St Kilda.
In Sunraysia around Mildura and Robinvale and in the Goulburn Valley around Shepparton and Cobram. Whether a job counts towards the 88 days depends on the postcode.
At least three days for the loop from Melbourne, better four to five with stops in Lorne, Apollo Bay and at the Twelve Apostles.
New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory.
Updated October 2026. Checked against official sources. Whether a job counts towards your second visa is decided by Home Affairs alone, so check with them before you start.