The Maryborough line

Mark Twain called Maryborough a railway station with a town attached, and the joke still lands — the 1890 station building is an absurd, beautiful thing to arrive at.

Creswick and Clunes fill out the line with bluestone shopfronts, book festivals and forest trails; all three towns are compact enough that everything worth doing is within a walk of the platform.

• Maryborough's cathedral-scale railway station

  Mark Twain called it a railway station with a town attached — an absurdly grand Victorian building that is now a cafe, gallery and antiques hall.

• Clunes bookshops and bluestone streetscape

  A tiny bluestone town that reinvented itself around second-hand books; a whole afternoon can vanish between shopfronts.

• Creswick's Forest Resort trails and gold history

  Kilometres of gentle forest trails through regrowth pine and eucalypt, easy enough to walk in runners straight from the station.

• Goldfields Track walking and riding routes

  The long-distance Goldfields Track threads these towns together, so you can walk one leg a day and catch the train back each evening.