Red Hill South brings together nature and culture: the Merricks Trail passes through lowland forest, while contemporary art takes centre stage at the Montalto Sculpture Trail. There are also trail features that address different trip-planning questions: shared use, as well as information about width and surface. This lets you choose your focus based on nature, art, or a trail’s characteristics.

Lowland forest on the Merricks Trail

The Merricks Trail passes through lowland forest with tall Messmate Stringybark and Narrow-leaf Peppermint trees. These tree species give the nature theme a distinct character and, together with the forest type, create a clear connection to the landscape. If you would like to focus on vegetation and trees during an outing, the trail offers a fitting point of interest. This is a different kind of outing from the contemporary art on the Montalto Sculpture Trail: here, the forest shapes the landscape experience.

Contemporary sculptures at Montalto

The permanent collection of contemporary sculptures on the Montalto Sculpture Trail also includes 20 works that received awards at the annual Montalto Sculpture Prize. The collection and the prize have different time frames: the collection is permanent, while the prize is annual. The contemporary focus describes the art in the collection, while the prize adds the context of the awards. This gives your trip planning a distinct cultural focus alongside the nature theme of the Merricks Trail. If you would like to include art in your stay, you can consider Montalto as a separate area of interest.

Shared use and trail conditions

The Merricks-Red Hill Trail is shared by pedestrians, mountain bikers, and horse riders. For planning, the type of activity is not the only factor: if you have one of these activities in mind, you should also take the shared-use nature of the trail into account. The Red Hill Trail follows a path that is generally two metres wide and made of asphalt or concrete. These two features offer different points of reference: shared use concerns the activities listed, while width and surface describe the trail conditions. Depending on which question matters most for your outing, you can use trail use or surface as a selection criterion.

Regional trail connection

In the wider travel area, the Red Hill Trail can be walked as an extension of the Red Hill Rail Trail from Merricks. This adds a regional route connection, distinct from specific questions about use and surface. If you are planning an outing across the wider travel area, this broader perspective is a separate consideration. It complements the local themes of landscape and sculptures with a connection between named trails.

These themes are not mutually exclusive: you can balance nature and art as interests during the same stay, and treat trail use, surface, and regional connections as separate planning considerations.

Discover more destinations: Penshurst, Merricks North, Cobden, Port Albert, Cosgrove, Dunolly, Clunes, Tallarook

For the wider travel overview: Victoria.