Getting around Victoria

Melbourne is Australia’s public-transport city: the world’s largest tram network stitched over a radial train system, with regional lines that make Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo commuter cities. The car matters less here than anywhere else in the country — until you leave town.

Melbourne: trams over the top, trains underneath

The trams are the icon and the everyday — 250 kilometres of track, free within the CBD, and the reason inner Melbourne works without a car. The trains do the distance: radial lines from the city loop out through every corridor, and the new metro tunnel has added cross-city capacity through the hospital precinct.

Everything runs on myki (card or phone), with daily caps. The practical rule from the suburbs chapter bears repeating: Melbourne liveability is line-shaped. Choose the line before the suburb, and test it at your actual shift times — hospital rosters and Sunday-morning frequencies are not natural friends.

Driving

Two toll roads, not a web

CityLink and EastLink are the paid corridors; most of Melbourne drives free. A tag or pass sorts both — simpler and cheaper than Sydney’s toll maze.

Hook turns exist

A handful of CBD intersections make you turn right from the left lane, for the trams’ sake. Terrifying once, automatic thereafter.

Trams change the road rules

You stop behind a stopped tram, always — passengers step straight onto the road. The fines and the moral stakes are both high.

Parking is the tax

Inner-city and hospital parking is scarce and priced to discourage. Ask about staff parking at interview; assume nothing.

V/Line: the regional difference

Geelong line

Frequent trains, about an hour — a true commuter service, and the reason surf-coast living with Melbourne work exists.

Ballarat & Bendigo lines

Roughly ninety minutes each, hourly or better — the enabling infrastructure behind the regional-city recommendation this guide keeps making.

Gippsland & the north-east

Traralgon and Seymour–Albury lines serve the eastern hospital towns; less frequent, still workable for flexible rosters.

Fares are capped

Regional fares are capped at metropolitan daily rates — the commute from Ballarat costs no more than one from the outer suburbs.

Flying

Melbourne Airport

Australia’s second gateway — direct to Asia, the Gulf, the US and the Pacific. One stop from most of the world, twenty-five minutes from the city by SkyBus (no train yet; it’s coming).

Avalon

Geelong’s budget airport — domestic low-cost flights, handy if you live west.

The eastern triangle

Melbourne–Sydney is one of the world’s busiest air corridors: hourly flights, ninety minutes. Brisbane a little over two hours.

Getting home

Budget a day each way to Europe or Africa, less to Asia. From regional Victoria, add the V/Line leg rather than a connecting flight.

Distances worth knowing

Journey	Typical time
CBD → Parkville hospital precinct	10 min by tram or metro tunnel
CBD → Box Hill / Footscray / Clayton	25–40 min by train
Melbourne → Geelong	~1 hr, road or V/Line
Melbourne → Ballarat / Bendigo	~90 min by V/Line
Melbourne → Torquay	~90 min by road
Melbourne → Yarra Valley / Daylesford	1–1.5 hr by road
Melbourne → the ski fields	3–4 hr by road, in season
Melbourne → Mildura	~6 hr by road, or a 1-hr flight
Melbourne → Sydney / Adelaide	1.5-hr flight / 8-hr drive

Off-peak estimates. Add for Melbourne roads at commuter hours and for the ski roads on winter weekends.

Licence conversion, buying and registering a car, and the practicalities of Australian driving are national topics, covered once in the master’s Living in Australia.

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