Extending from the city’s central business district north to Hepburn, west to Portland and east to Gippsland and Mount Hotham, it will take in some of the most scenic corners of the state of Victoria once it is completed in 2030.

Already open to visitors is the stretch that dips down into the Mornington Peninsula, a coastal enclave an hour and a half’s drive south of Melbourne.

That is no accident – one of the stops here is Peninsula Hot Springs, a thermal mineral springs and day spa co-founded by Charles Davidson, who is the man spearheading the entire route.

Davidson says he became enamoured with the idea of communal bathing and how it connected people during a visit to an onsen bath in Japan in 1992.

“All I could think of was, ‘Why don’t we have this at home?’,” he explains.

Later, through a conversation with a colleague in 1997, the Melburnian discovered that there was thermal water virtually on his doorstep. It would take almost a decade before he was able to open his own establishment, in 2005.

Across 42 acres (17 hectares) of forests, Peninsula Hot Springs has more than 70 globally inspired bathing and wellness experiences, ranging from steamy saunas to ice-cold plunges, allowing visitors to connect to nature and themselves.

The Great Victorian Bathing Trail is an extension of that mentality, and Davidson wants more operators to come on board.

“This is really a product that’s about the location – it’s a gift from the location, so in that sense the more places you have together, the more the story manifests,” he explains.

Each of the stops acts as a lighthouse to guide visitors onwards across the state, according to Davidson: “The bathing might be the excuse to get you there, but then it becomes a case of, ‘Well, what else is there?’

“People tend to want to stay overnight somewhere, and they’ll eat and go see something else because you can’t stay in a hot pool all day.”

In the case of the Mornington Peninsula, the “what else” includes wineries complete with art installations and connected by scenic drives, restaurants run by celebrity chefs in luxury hotels cocooned by nature and with gorgeous views, and hikes in eucalyptus-scented forests and across sandy beaches.

There is a choice of bathing experiences too, both on and off the route.

Here, 31 outdoor pools of varying temperatures, each fed by mineral-rich geothermal water, cascade through 37 acres of manicured gardens. In the main building, spacious spa suites lead up to private bathing chambers, where tailor-made experiences await.

A 15-minute drive away is Aurora Spa & Bathhouse, a European-style wellness centre attached to the InterContinental Sorrento Mornington Peninsula hotel that also opened at the end of 2022. For its founder, Lyndall Mitchell, the regional focus on bathing is a natural progression for the Australian wellness industry.

When she opened the original Aurora Spa, in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, in 1997, it was one of Australia’s first day spas. It had 22 treatment rooms because “that’s what people knew and expected of a spa”.

In the years since, immigration has made Melbourne a more diverse city, and many of the new settlers have come from countries with a tradition of bathing for wellness.

“When we had the opportunity to purpose-build here, I felt the market was more advanced and was craving more,” explains Mitchell. And so there are just eight treatment rooms at Aurora 2.0.

The rest of the 1,000 square metre (10,800 sq ft) space is given over to four magnesium-infused hydrotherapy pools, one of the biggest saunas in the southern hemisphere, a Himalayan salt room, a glacial ice chamber and spine-tingling experiential showers.

And the Great Victorian Bathing Trail?

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for tourism,” says Mitchell. “Now we have this triangle of bathing that’s bringing in new audiences and it’s giving Victorians something right on their doorstep.”

Our writer travelled as a guest of Visit Victoria and Tourism Australia.