If you find walking tours too sober and pub crawls declassé, a new Melbourne walking tour combining history and drinking could be for you.
Drinking History Tours offers a tour of Melbourne’s famed laneways, Federation Square, the Forum, the MCG, AC/DC Lane, the Old Treasury Building, Chinatown and more, along with dinner and stops at two of Melbourne’s laneway bars along the way.
Founder Ben Oliver is a former European tour guide and has been working as a walking tour guide in Melbourne for the past five years. The tour will bring walkers to plenty of out-of-the-way places and will point out some excellent laneway watering holes along the way, if all that walking makes you thirsty at the end of the night. Oliver promises tales of murder, bushrangers and derring-do, along with lesser-known stories of Melbourne history.
The tours will kick off in late February and will run on Wednesdays from 6.30-9pm. Groups will meet in Fed Square and end up in Cohen Place in Chinatown. The $59 fee covers the tour and dinner but not drinks. So if you want to make it a big one you might be in for an expensive night.
For northern neighbours or those who feel the call of the west, Fitzroy and Footscray Drinking History Tours are also in the works.