The Maroondah Highway is one of those roads that rewards the drivers who stay on it. The city drops away quickly, the bends get more interesting, and by the time you reach the Yarra Valley you’re already glad you made the effort.
Healesville is an easy place to stop, and plenty of groups do exactly that. But the Yarra Valley has more to offer if you keep going, including a certain Italian restaurant, event space and winery that makes the extra kilometres worthwhile.
DiVino Ristorante at e’Stellar Estate in Dixons Creek is the Yarra Valley car meet venue that changes how your club thinks about a day out. With glass walls on three sides, vines running down the hill, and a kitchen that takes the local produce seriously. The kind of place you and your club find once and then keep coming back to.
Start with the drive: Maroondah Highway to the Yarra Valley
For anyone planning a day trip from Melbourne for car clubs or motorcycle groups, the Yarra Valley is a natural first move. It sits just an hour from the city via the Maroondah Highway. It feels close enough to do comfortably on a Sunday, but also far enough to feel like you actually went somewhere.
The Black Spur runs along the Maroondah Highway between Healesville and Marysville about 60 kilometres northeast of Melbourne. The two-lane road twists through mountain Ash and fern gullies with hairpin turns and short straights, the kind of road that cars and motorbikes enjoy equally. Most people who have driven it will tell you it’s one of the best roads in Victoria after the Great Ocean Road. Well, they’re not wrong.
Healesville and the Maroondah Dam area is already an established stop for motorcycle and vintage car enthusiasts working though the region, one of the well known Maroondah Highway car enthusiasts stops on the eastern run out of Melbourne. The Porsche Club of Victoria knows this stretch well; they’ve run multiple events through the Yarra Valley on roads they specifically described as “Porsche Perfect,” including a run that finished with a winery lunch in Coldstream.
Ferrari Club Australia Victoria runs a similar calendar: drive days, rallies, and social gatherings built around any excuse to use the cars. Supercar experiences already use the Black Spur as their centerpiece route, finishing with shared lunches at Yarra Valley estates.
The logic is simple: a great road deserves a great ending.
Winery lunch for car clubs, done properly
This is the part worth planning around.
DiVino’s kitchen runs on seasonal produce from our on-site garden, with locally sourced meat from our partners across the valley. What that means on the plate is perfect pasta and pizza dough that blisters properly at the edges. The menu leans into a slow-cooked Italian technique: ragùs that take most of the day, handmade shapes that change with the season, wood-fired bases that hold up under proper toppings.
Pair that with wine from the vines literally outside the window and you have a winery lunch for car clubs that’s hard to match anywhere else in the region. As one of the standout Dixons Creek winery restaurants, DiVino earns its reputation through the food and not just the view. Though the view doesn’t hurt either!
For groups who want to eat outside, the garden runs alongside the Glass Room and is available through the warmer months. Picture a genuine alfresco Italian lunch in the Yarra Valley rather than just a table near an open door.
Browse the DiVino menu to get a feel for what the kitchen does before you book.
The best Yarra Valley venue for your next club day
Here’s what matters practically when you’re organizing a group.
The Glass Room seats up to 90 for a sit down function and handles larger numbers for canape-style events, with glass walls on every side and vineyard views from every seat. The estate has on-site parking with enough room for a convoy to arrive without chaos, whether that’s a row of motorcycles or sports cars that each need a bit of extra clearance. For clubs looking for secure parking in the Yarra Valley that doesn’t mean squeezing into shared car parking, it’s a detail that matters more than it sounds.
The team tailors each function rather than running the same event twice, which makes a difference when you’re putting together group dining for a motorcycle rally or a car club lunch where the details actually count.
This isn’t a hired function room with a catering package bolted on. It’s one of the more considered luxury car event spaces near Melbourne that happens to be attached to a proper Italian restaurant, and that combination is rarer than it sounds. For Porsche club meeting locations in Victoria and Ferrari club gatherings in the Yarra Valley, DiVino offers something most options in the region don’t.
Ready to book your club’s next run?
As Yarra Valley car meet venues go, DiVino at e’Stellar Estate is worth planning your route around. Whether you’re running a supercar Sunday drive through Victoria, a motorcycle group looking for a proper sit-down stop, or a car club after one of the best Yarra Valley venues to anchor a full day out – get in touch with us to lock in your date and talk through what your group needs!
Explore Events & Functions or head straight to Group Bookings to start planning!
