You can no longer travel there by train but it's an easy hour-and-a-half freeway drive from the city to a sweep of coast where baches now need millionaire buyers.
With golf courses aplenty and 170 vineyards, it's all very baby-boomer friendly. Add in foodie stop-offs, artsy outlets and an emerging spa culture.
Victorians know the beach-fringed, steeply rising bush-topped peninsula as the ideal place for an easy outing. Increasingly, tourists are adding on a few days to a city stay to sample some easily accessible "me" or couple time.
On offer is the usual 21st-century menu of pampering experiences for the time-poor, but with some distinct natural advantages, such as being Australia's best region for cool climate chardonnay and pinot noir. The wine trails and around 50 cellar-door tasting options are a key draw.
It's fun to indulge in the standard transtasman rivalry, but best to agree just to toast the difference. Sitting gazing at the vines and sculpture garden at Montalto Vineyard, it would be churlish to play homegrown favourites.
At T'Gallant, where the view from the trattoria is over some of Red Hill's most established vines, the tasting is instructive and enticing. I stock up, curbed only by the six-bottle customs limit.
Though, if you're serious about wine you can have it shipped home, like the Scottish couple I meet at dinner at nearby Lindenderry, where I'm cocooned in an enormous garden room in soothing shades of blue.
By dessert, aided by a helpful waitress, the Scots and I are sharing a sticky and they are planning a trip to Paringa Estate for some of Australia's most recognised pinot noir.
After a massage at Lindenderry's Endota spa I'm ready again to point the car down whichever byway takes my fancy.
The windy upland roads of the peninsula lead through tiny towns with cafes and antique shops down to stark surf beaches. The tip of the peninsula around Cape Schanck is full of walking tracks and rounds to Portsea and on to bustling Sorrento, where car ferries cross Port Phillip Bay to Queenscliff, where drivers can connect with the Great Ocean Rd.
Continuing, though, along the shore from Sorrento, through a rapidly merging string of settlements, you can divert uphill to Arthurs Seat and its cable car with views back towards the city, or continue until you reach Mornington itself, with the only real suburban sprawl of the peninsula.
Houses cling to the coast, or are hidden in bush back roads. The area is also home to a fair chunk of national park land and some sizeable farms.
Its closeness to one of the world's great food cities and the number of corporate types making a sea change to build new businesses, means the service you'll encounter is jolly good.
At the plush Woodman Estate and Spa, I'm welcomed with a glass of bubbles and soothed with a facial using lovely natural Australian skincare products. Armed with a map showing the three main wine trails, I detour to Merricks, where an old-style general store has become a restaurant and wine-tasting room with period charm.
Then it's time for a soak in the Peninsula Hot Springs. Here too, the standard hot-pool experience is made special if you want to step into the separate spa treatment rooms.
The more adventure-minded visitor can go sailing, surfing, horse-riding or swimming with dolphins, but my recommendation is the Heronswood garden. I can't bear getting my hands dirty, but I do like a wander among the plants. Not surprisingly, Heronswood is full of women, most of them a certain age. But I'd put it on anyone's itinerary.
There's a lovely little cafe behind a historic house that dates from the 1870s.
The food is straight from the gardens, which specialise in keeping heritage plants alive.
I eat freshly podded organic broad beans with herbs and fresh sardine fillets on linguini, and, of course, take a glass of peninsula wine, this time a fragrant pinot gris.
A sea view, a tranquil garden, a gentle walk, then local wine and food. Not exactly luxurious, but certainly indulgent. Few of us require much more in a holiday.
Further information:
Mornington Peninsula
Lindenderry at Red Hill
The Diggers Club
Tourism Victoria
Janetta Mackay travelled to Mornington Peninsula courtesy of Tourism Victoria and stayed at Lindenderry at Red Hill.
