Inside Portsea’s new golden age: where Melbourne’s elite holiday in style

Portsea is really just Toorak on holiday. At the far end of the Mornington Peninsula, where scarcity breeds upward mobility, you’re likely to see the same cars and the same faces as that ritzy Melbourne ’burb, only with the addition of Camilla kaftans and well-brushed Akubras. 

It’s hard to blame anyone who’s adopted this as their summer playground. Portsea is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Take Millionaire’s Walk (no, the name isn’t a joke), the 1.5-kilometre clifftop track to see the town at its best: mansions with views that go on for days, colourful beach boxes down on the sand and all the accoutrements of life as a 0.01 percenter.

In further bad news for the haters, anyone who has enjoyed the schadenfreude of its historically disappointing drinking and dining scene will be surprised to hear recent years have seen it take a turn for the better.

The Portsea Hotel remains the anchor and the heart of the town, but the nearly 150-year-old institution was feeling its age until a multimillion-dollar facelift brought it up to 21st-century speed. Make a beeline for the faux-Tudor grand dame to feel you’re in Australia’s answer to the Hamptons, with a swish, beachy fitout and a menu sporting pub classics and wood-fired pizzas. The brilliant position overlooking the bay beach and grassy lawn for kids to gambol upon remains the same – all the better for their parents to explore the cocktail list unencumbered by responsibility.

Right next to the pier in Portsea Village, Le Capucin is the town’s epicentre for caffeine and croissants. The Francophile one-stop shop is equally alluring for an eat-in breakfast of classic scrambled eggs, savoury mushroom crepes and a summer-friendly cassoulet. But its “know thy customer” mantra means it’s equally adept at packaging up paninis to take to the beach or heat-and-eat family-sized pies (je t’aime, beef bourguignon) for those Portsea evenings when you can’t be bothered cooking. 

And then there’s its wine bar sibling, Pompette (“tipsy” in French), which came along to melt the neighbourhood’s collective heart last year. Loic and Kirsty Duchet’s aim was to open the kind of place they would love to frequent. That means they’re people with cracking taste in chardonnay and chablis and all those retro French dishes that have been around the block and then come back again: snails in garlic butter, goats’ cheese terrine, steak frites and confit duck. No wonder Portsea practically purrs at the mention of it.

Of course, one cannot live by foie gras alone, so it’s worth taking a cleansing trip to Baked In Portsea. Situated in what passes as the area’s “industrial estate” (pause for laughter), it’s got great AllPress coffee and everything you need for al fresco dining happiness. 

Agent lens

with Liz Jensen from Kay & Burton 

Why do people love Portsea?

Despite its prestigious and slightly pretentious reputation, Portsea is truly the most disarmingly natural environment for which there is no equivalent. It’s like an island surrounded by bay and ocean, with the most pristine coastline where troubles float away with the tide. It also has the high life, with social activities from golf, tennis and pickleball to the polo, the Surf Lifesaving Club, Portsea Hotel and restaurants. Then you can add the scarcity of real estate – people love enjoying it with family, friends or huge celebratory events when half of Melbourne seems to visit.

For sale in Portsea

Expressions of Interest close 27th November

4 McColls Way, Portsea VIC 3944

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A secluded path through the tea trees will take you from the historic homestead straight to the sand of exclusive Shelley Beach, one of Portsea’s best-kept secrets. Offered for the first time in 120 years, the character-filled home and a separate cottage nestle together on a land parcel of more than 1800 square metres.