Holiday houses in Colac

With more than 50 lakes, rolling green pastures, and dramatic volcanic cones and craters, the Colac countryside offers a bucolic taste of Victoria’s southwest. This part of the state is a patchwork of farms, with long-lashed cows and shaggy sheep a frequent sight. The town itself sits on the southern shore of enormous freshwater Lake Colac, its banks indicative of the variety of local pursuits: clubs dedicated to fishing, yachting, and rowing, as well as parks, a bird reserve, and the Colac Botanic Gardens.

Colac is also a gateway to the Otway Ranges, which spans a jaw-dropping number of ecosystems, from ferny gullies where waterfalls tumble to forests of dwarfing eucalypts and the windswept beaches and cliffs of the Great Ocean Road in the south. In between lie glow worms (visit the Melba Gully), ziplines, and treetop walks (Otway Fly), and boardwalks leading to the three cascades of Triplet Falls. When you reach the coast at Cape Otway, one of the world’s most epic road trips awaits, whether you choose to veer east towards Torquay or west to Allansford.

Like much of Victoria’s southwest, peak seasons to stay in an accommodation in Colac are the summer months and Easter school holidays — the weather is warm and humid, the cool water of the lakes is enticing, and outdoor adventures await. But these very conditions can make long walks uncomfortable, particularly along the coast, with many hikers preferring to return in winter or the shoulder seasons of spring and autumn. If you’re planning on exploring the Great Ocean Road, these non-peak seasons also guarantee less traffic, fewer people — and a chance to spot migrating whales (May through November).

Red Rock Reserve volcanic site

To fully appreciate the geological history of Colac — set on the world’s third-largest volcanic plain — make a beeline to the Red Rock Reserve’s lookout to gaze over a lunar landscape of crater lakes, overlapping maars, scoria cones, and small lava flows. The lookout crowns one of Australia’s youngest volcanoes and offers vistas across rust-hued Lake Corangamite, the largest permanent saline lake in the country.

Otway Fly Treetop Adventures

See the Otway rainforest from a sky-high perspective at this adventure park, where you can zip through the rainforest canopy or stroll a 600-metre-long (1,970-foot) Treetop Walk, one of the longest of its kind in the world. This vantage offers a rare glimpse of the flora and fauna that thrives at this level of the forest — look out for koalas and all manner of birds.

Colac Botanic Gardens

Established in 1865, these historic gardens on the banks of Lake Colac are the fertile home for a number of rare plants — the kind you only find on grounds protected and nurtured for more than 150 years. Ancient elms and pines and a carriageway of oaks sit beside a bounty of native flora, from vibrant wattles to heathland and even a garden of bush tucker (edible and medicinal plants used by Indigenous communities for millennia).