The best things to do in Melbourne this weekend

Scienceworks invites visitors to explore Earth and the cosmos with a series of after-hours and adults-only film screenings on the huge Planetarium dome, with a drink in hand. Every Friday night, those over 18 can explore the universe through immersive documentaries and marvel at the magic of the universe. You won’t go spacing out at these shows either, as they’re loaded with amazing visuals and stellar content. The Friday night screenings feature two fims: one at 7.30pm and the other at 9pm. The films change each month; this June, you can look forward to Voyager – The Never Ending Journey in the earlier session. Ukrainian filmmaker Yuriy Gapon takes viewers on a wild ride to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune to see the launch of two space probes that would make history in the 1970s. If you book in for this slot, a presenter will also walk you through What’s in the Sky Tonight, where our real-time night sky will look more like a movie.  If you decide to come to the later session (or buy a double ticket and stick around), Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon will be lighting up the dome. Strap in for 42 minutes of non-stop tunes from the legendary rock band, as their greatest hits from the album Dark Side of the Moon is played in surround sound while set to trippy celestial visuals. Update Thursday, June 12: The June screenings of Dark Side of the Moon are all sold out, but you can catch the show back by popular demand in August (if you're eager, you can snag tickets from...

Looking for things to do now that the cool weather has set in? Rug up and head to the City of Casey, located just a 40-minute drive from the CBD, for its Winter Arts Festival from June 20 to July 20.  This celebration of creativity, community and colour is back for another year, with a jam-packed program of performances, installations, film screenings and workshops spotlighting local talent. Taking over multiple venues including Narre Warren’s creative hub Bunjil Place, the historic Old Cheese Factory and the expansive Wilson Botanic Garden, the program features a mix of free and ticketed events. Highlights include a crowd-pleasing production of the Broadway hit Mamma Mia!, performed by Windmill Theatre Company; an electric drag cabaret showcase from Queers of Concert; and live music covering everything from soul to pop by the talented South East Music students. Film buffs can catch a special screening of the heartwarming flick Memoir of a Snail, followed by an exclusive Q&A with the Oscar-winning filmmaker Adam Elliot – who just so happens to be a nearby Berwick local. There’s also Lost in Bunjil Place Plaza, a free art installation by Amanda Parer featuring giant, illuminated sculptures of endangered botanical species.  Families are well catered for, with a line-up of kid-friendly events and interactive theatre shows. These include The Owl’s Apprentice, a magical mix of shadow puppetry and physical theatre, and Imagine Live, a live-action musical adaptation of a beloved...

French Impressionism is host to arguably some of the most famous (and most loved) artists of all time. Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Van Gogh and Degas are just some of the artists who achieved such acclaim that they remain household names even a century after their deaths. And this winter, you can see some of the artist's most beautiful and well-known works right here in Melbourne at the NGV's new exhibition, French Impressionism: From the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. From June 5 to October 5, 2025, the NGV will host more than 100 French Impressionist works by artists like Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne and Mary Cassatt – including works never before seen in Australia. The exhibition is running in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which is well regarded for its collection of French Impressionist masterpieces.    A highlight is the display of 16 canvases in one gallery, painted over a 30-year period, by Claude Monet. These works depict many of Monet’s most beloved scenes of nature in Argenteuil, the Normandy coast, the Mediterranean coast and his famous garden in Giverny.  One of the best things about this exhibition is that you will also learn the stories of the artists, exhibitions and collectors that shaped this significant movement in art history. Originally brought to the NGV back in 2021, this exhibition had to close just after it opened due to (yep, you guessed it), the...

Melbourne's favourite illuminated event is back again for a fourth year, with more than 20 dazzling new light installations to meander through in wonderment. From June 20 to August 10, take a nighttime stroll through the Royal Botanic Gardens and experience luminous pathways, lit-up tree canopies, soothing soundscapes and more spectacular sights. For the upcoming season, you can expect a reimagined 2.2km trail accompanied by stunning lakeside reflections, large-scale illuminated sculptures and other wonders, with more than 100,000 tiny lights on display. Expect 2025 highlights to be huge illuminated canopy of flowers and the mesmerising 'lawn of light'. Most importantly, you'll also be able to grab a bite to eat and warming drinks, like hot chocolate and mulled wine, at the Welcome Zone or along the trail. They say that Melbourne is at its best in winter and events like Lightscape, where you can rug up and join friends for a magical experience, are a big reason why. Adult tickets start at $36 and are available through the website – be quick as they tend to go fast.  Want more? Check out the best things happening in Melbourne this week.

Imagine The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Frank-N-Furter raised in the American Midwest by Vivienne Westwood. Or Debbie Harry, if she grew up in a queer bathhouse in East Berlin. That’s Hedwig Schmidt: the glam-rock heart of Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, brought to spectacular life in the first Aussie revival since 2006. You have to picture this show as it began – in a sweaty basement club called the SqueezeBox during New York’s punk scene in 1994. This was a place where a house band performed rock tunes called “the music of gay bashers”, and punters put on messy drag to kick, scream and vamp on stage beside them. Hedwig was born out of this energy; a combination of cigarette ash, anarchism and smut inspired by Cameron Mitchell’s life in Berlin and Kansas and soundtracked by Trask’s work with the SqueezeBox band. It’s the closest I’ve come to calling a musical ‘punk’ without rolling my eyes. With its taboo-flouting lead and the unbridled chaos of its style, it is still as genuinely transgressive as it was thirty years ago.  This production succeeds by replicating the intimacy and anger that created the show in the first place. We’re somewhere in the Midwest waiting for Hedwig to start a 90-minute cabaret performance accompanied by her band, the Inch. The set (by Jeremy Allen) evokes an industrial warehouse and a dive-bar in one: think a simple circular rise centre stage with a staircase at the back furnished with cooly metallic...

Snakes have curled their way around mythology for millennia. Present in countless creation stories from Egyptian, Greek and Indian to Norse and First Nations cultures (including the Rainbow Serpent), the loaded symbolism of this coiled creature clasping its tail between its fangs – the ouroboros – evokes eternity.  Sometimes the serpent holds the world together. Other times, it’s a constricting chaos agent. Either way, the fireside nature of myths, oft-shared in storytelling sessions spun under the stars, is inherently unending, melding anew with each retelling. Tackled by everyone from Roman poets Virgil and Ovid to Canadian indie rockers Arcade Fire and Katee Robert’s queered novel, Midnight Ruin, the myth of Eurydice and her Orpheus finds new life in the hands of folk singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell. Her eight Tony Award-winning smash-hit musical Hadestown began life as a sung-through community project before she turned it into a concept album, and then a Broadway smash with help from director Rachel Chavkin. In most Greek tales, Eurydice and her Orpheus are happily married, torn apart by a cruel twist of fate: a viper’s bite (sometimes while pursued by toxic dudebro Aristaeus), not even a malicious god in disguise. As she fades into the Underworld, ruled over by Hades and his niece/abducted wife Persephone (!!!), a desolate Orpheus, son of a musical muse, plays his lyre like her life depends on it. Descending into the abyss and crossing the River Styx, he makes a...

The Yarra Valley Chocolaterie and its sister venues, Great Ocean Road Chocolaterie and Mornington Peninsula Chocolaterie, are hosting a delicious 18-day festival dedicated to possibly the best baked invention since sliced bread: the brownie. During the sweet extravaganza, the chocolateries will be releasing 16 limited-edition brownie varieties to sample, along with a range of brownie-inspired desserts and drinks.  Wondering what flavours are available this year? Here's a tasty teaser about what to expect: Dubai chocolate, Basque cheesecake, peanut butter chocolate whisky, black sesame and yuzu tarte. Yum! There are even gluten-free and vegan options to try so no one misses out. If you eat, sleep and breathe brownies, you might want to consider booking one of the tasting sessions. This is where you'll get to concoct your dream brownie from 50 different ingredients and while that’s baking, get to sample eight exclusive creations including bites, a hot chocolate and brownie ice cream You can even order the brownies to take home too – if they last the drive home, that is. The Brownie Festival is on from June 11-29. You can find out more here.  Keen for more fun? Here are the best things to do around Victoria in June.

Way back when Tim Burton was a much weirder filmmaker, my wee brother and I were unreasonably thrilled by the chaos engine of awfully bad behaviour that was Michael Keaton’s unhinged and unwashed demon, Betelgeuse.  The grotty stripe-suited monster ate up the 1988 film of not quite the same name – the studio figured folks would stay away unless the title was simplified to Beetlejuice. Named after the red supergiant star blazing ferociously in the constellation of Orion, some 600 light years from our solar system, Betelgeuse is an outcast from the hilariously bureaucratic afterlife, aka the Netherworld. Which leaves him preying on the naïve recently deceased, like sweet young couple Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), in an attempt to crowbar open the sort of ridiculous loophole the Greek gods are fond of. Say his – apparently too complex – name three times and he’ll be unleashed on the mortal coil once more.  But Betelgeuse’s sleazy attentions are soon distracted by Winona Ryder’s goth child Lydia, when she reluctantly moves into Adam and Barbara’s now-empty house with her dad, Charles (disgraced actor Jeffrey Jones), and his new squeeze, OTT sculptor Delia (fabulously demented goddess Catherine O’Hara). A smash hit, Beetlejuice is a wild and unruly thing writhing with unhinged ideas, from its stop-animated black and white sand worms to characters shrunk into a model of sleepy town Winter River, and on to the hilariously-depicted dead of the surreal...

While winter seems like the time to hide under the doona and get reacquainted with your Netflix must-watch list, that is absolutely the wrong approach. Cold weather brings with it a kind of magic in the form of frosty air and clear, still views that seem to go on forever, and this is especially the case in regional Victoria.  If you're keen to head on a cool-climate caper but aren't sure where to begin, you're in luck: the East Gippsland Winter Festival is returning for its fifth iteration. Rug up and hit the road for a month-long celebration packed with lavish winter feasts, fantastical art installations, live music, lantern parades, creative workshops, wellness experiences and much more. This year, the festivities kick off on June 20 and coincide with the Victorian school holidays. Returning highlights of the program include the Medieval Winter Fire Festival at Bruthen complete with swordfights, costumes and bonfires; a long lunch on the Nicholson River Trestle Bridge showcasing the region's best produce; live ice sculpting and a fire show at Meetung; and Lakes Lights – an incredible display of lantern sculptures, light projections and roaming performers on the foreshore of Lakes Entrance.   New events on the line-up include an après-ski party complete with mulled wine, hot toddies and DJs; the Op Shop Ball in Cann River, where attendees are encouraged to wear their finest oph shop garb; and the Great Alpine Scarecrow Competition. And don't miss the sunrise dip in the...

May the 4th is a special date for any Star Wars fan, but this year it'll be one to remember. A brand-new Lego Star Wars exhibition is making its world premiere, and it won't be in a galaxy far, far away but right here in Melbourne.  Lego Star Wars: the Exhibition at Melbourne Museum comes from revered Lego genius Ryan 'Brickman' McNaught, who's back with his latest mind-boggling project of massive Star Wars brick creations – some standing at a whopping four metres tall.  There'll be Lego replicas of many of the iconic characters, fan favourite scenes, spacecraft and more, from both the classic films and newer releases. Plus, the exhibition will include interactive brick-based activities inclusive of all ages.  While there's still some time to wait for the exhibition opening, building has already begun, and it's expected it'll take more than 25,000 hours to finish and use a wild 8 million Lego bricks. One of the most monumental creations is a three-metre-tall red X-wing spacecraft, made of an astonishing 64,759 bricks, taking 382 hours to build.  "Fans will be blown away by the scale of the experience," Brickman says. "Building these iconic scenes and characters in Lego Star Wars form is an extremely complex task – taking the humble Lego brick and using it by the millions to translate into Star Wars builds and models at an epic scale the world has never seen before.  "My team and I are super excited to launch this mind-blowing experience right here in Melbourne. My inner...