DISCOVER MELBOURNE
DISCOVER MELBOURNE
Melbourne, our beautiful city.
Exploring Melbourne, our regional areas or even the Mornington Peninsula or the Dandenong Ranges is excellent on a day like today. It’s not hot, it’s not freezing cold and raining.
Wandering around the City, jumping on the Circle tram, there is so much to do and see.
Melbourne is renowned for ‘4 seasons in one day’, our temperature variance, our seasons, is one of the reasons why people love Melbourne.
Having family interstate they often say that they miss the seasons. When you live in an area of consistent temperatures over 25, where sunny days are everyday (until they are not and it’s monsoonal rain), our autumn colour, even our stark deciduous winter trees, are stunning.
Of course, it can be tricky to make plans, how many layers of clothes should you wear, should you take a coat, an umbrella, and possibly even a sunhat!
School holidays are currently on, and depending on whether you were
1. Even aware the holidays were on
2. Are babysitting grandchildren or
3. Loving the lighter traffic you will have a different perception.
Personally, I completely forget about school holidays now my adult children are working, and I don’t live near a school. I only remember when I see more people during the week in Olinda, and in particular, at the Dandenong Ranges Botanic Gardens.
If you are babysitting grandchildren over the holidays then parking is always good at the NGV in St Kilda Rd, plus they have school holiday activities. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/school-holidays-at-ngv/
Most shopping centres will also have activities for children to encourage you into the centre. Parking is often free if you stay under a certain time limit, plenty of time to catch a movie, hit the smorgasbord of food in the food court, and let the kids participate in some activities. Of course, ALWAYS keep an eye on them.
A quick look at Eastlands website https://eastland.qicre.com/ shows a dinosaur and chocolate, sounds like a wonderful match!
Dinosaurs, includes a scavenger hunt plus a free play zone. https://eastland.qicre.com/Campaigns/Jurassic-World-Rebirth
Chadstone has some school holiday fun of its own https://www.chadstone.com.au/cjhendry/school-holidays
If you check out your local area, even your local Councils website, you will come up with some ideas, and many of them will be free.
For the adults out there, a friend recently explored the hidden bars of Melbourne, and there is a tour you can take https://drinkinghistorytours.com/
It looked like great fun. She always has the best ideas.
DISCOVER YOUR LOCAL AREA
Exploring your local area, staying close to home, and seeing what is on offer during Winter.
It’s the school holidays and there may be more people at the place you often go.
Usually on a Wednesday morning, you will find me at the Olinda Cafe with Sonya Murphy from Adala Publishing, we talk business, what we are up to, what do we want to achieve in the next week, before falling into more casual conversations.
When you work for yourself, from home, it is lovely to have someone you can chat to, someone who gets it.
The Olinda Cafe gets busier during school holidays as you would expect, and we are mindful of not lingering over our coffees when they start to get busy.
DISCOVER NEW PLACES TO EAT AND GO
Discover updates to your local parks and waterways. Many councils are rejuvenating local creeks and parks and making them more user and all-ability friendly.
Discover new cafes, bakeries, and hotels. Triple MMM recently revealed their “Best of Melbourne for 2025 winners” https://triplem.listnr.com/w/melbourne/its-back-for-2025-2/
- Best Bakery: The Basin Bakery, in The Basin (yes, it’s a real place)
- Best Hotel: The Panton Hill Pub, Panton Hill
- Best Coffee: Station Stop Cafe, Parkdale
- Best Sandwich: Applehead Deli, Mentone
- Best Butcher: The Meat-Inn Place, Lilydale
- Best Pizza: La Lupa Pizza and Pasta, Tyabb
- Best Sports Club Canteen, Research Junior Football Club
Maybe go for a drive and judge for yourself. What a wonderful way to explore Melbourne and surrounds.
DISCOVER REAL ESTATE, AN UPDATE
The REIV results, economists, and real estate agents tell a similar story. The real estate market is picking up. I read today that February was a low point, and it’s all upwards from the next RBA announcement due this week.
Rarely do I take the hype for granted. It’s easy for those not currently selling or buying to make a blanket statement but remembering that each market segment, each area will have a different reaction to announcements about where the market is heading.
“Melbourne has shifted down the national rankings
Perhaps no single statistic captures this transformation better than Melbourne’s shift from the nation’s second-most expensive property market to sixth place – a movement of four positions that highlights just how dramatically Australian property markets have evolved.”
Nerida Conisbee, the chief economist from Ray White, wrote in a recent article on LinkedIn, and explained why Melbourne has slid to position number 6 in expensive places to buy. A radically different position from our long-standing second only to Sydney place. Nerida explains the results since 2019. Of course, we all know what happened in 2020 and our endless lockdowns, distance restrictions, working from home, not working from home, the utter chaos and our residents fleeing north where the living was easier.
*you will need a LinkedIn account to read the article.
Discover answers to your own real estate problems by contacting Carol and booking a call
Auction Results from July 5 2025
There were 443 auctions reported for July 5, compared to 678 last weekend (school holiday impact).
A Clearance Rate of 90% was stunning.
There were 398 sales with 45 Auctions passing in.
303 homes sold at auction, 95 sold prior, and 10 were withdrawn.
There were 204 private sales reported.
Over the coming week these figures will be updated as results come in.
