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Cheap flights to Melbourne
The lowest fares to Melbourne, Australia on Expedia Flights. Compare every major carrier, see the cheapest weekday for your route, and book without add-on fees at checkout.
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What things cost in Melbourne
Two hours on a myki costs a little over five dollars and a full day around eleven, with a lower cap on weekends and public holidays. Coffee sits at $4.50 to $6 and a pub parma at $25 to $32. A pint in Fitzroy is $12 to $15. Melbourne Museum charges adults about $15 and children nothing, while the NGV and ACMI permanent collections are free.
What first-timers get wrong in Melbourne
Sydney lets you tap a bank card onto the reader; Melbourne still does not, so buy a myki at a station or a 7-Eleven, or load Mobile myki, before you go anywhere. Inside the Free Tram Zone, do not touch on at all, because doing so starts charging you. Drivers face the hook turn, where you turn right from the left-hand lane and wait at the lights for the signal to change.
What's actually worth your time in Melbourne
Melbourne has no harbour to sell you, so the attraction is behaviour: laneways, tram lines and a football ground. An AFL match at the MCG in winter, among ninety thousand people who care enormously, beats any tour of the empty stadium. The little penguins that come ashore on the St Kilda breakwater at dusk are free and genuinely wild. Brighton's bathing boxes are one photograph and a long tram ride.
When the weather turns in Melbourne
The four-seasons cliche is meteorologically real, because cold fronts cross Port Phillip Bay and drop the temperature ten degrees within an hour, even in February. The Block and Royal Arcades let you cross the grid under nineteenth-century glass. The La Trobe Reading Room dome at the State Library on Swanston Street is free and the best room in the city. The NGV and ACMI cost nothing either.
Melbourne's museums, and which one to pick
The NGV splits across two buildings and the permanent collection in both is free: St Kilda Road for international art, where visitors lie flat on the Great Hall floor beneath Leonard French's stained-glass ceiling, and the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square for Australian and Indigenous work. ACMI's moving-image galleries are free too. Melbourne Museum charges adults but not under-sixteens, and keeps Phar Lap's mounted hide.
When to go to Melbourne
| Best months for cheap-flights | Avg daily high | Rain days |
|---|---|---|
| February | 25°C / 77°F | 6 days |
| March | 23°C / 73°F | 8 days |
| January | 26°C / 79°F | 9 days |
The month to avoid is July — around 13°C (55°F) with roughly 12 rain days. Prices and crowds track the weather here: February is the sweet spot, July the month most people skip.
Pack for peak season: Summer clothes, plus one light layer for air-con and evenings, Comfortable walking shoes — every guide on this site assumes you'll use them.