I ditched the highways between Sydney and Melbourne - and found Australia's heart

There's more than one way to skin a cat, or so the saying goes. And it applies to driving between Melbourne and Sydney. The quickest route is along the Hume Highway. But it's painfully boring, bypassing every town along the way. The more scenic alternative is the Princes Highway, though even that includes long, dull stretches away from the coast, particularly in Victoria. So what's the alternative? Is it possible to travel between the country's largest cities away from the two major highways without adding much mileage? The answer is yes.

Distance travelled: 441 kilometres

My wife and I set off from Star RV's Melbourne depot in a two-person Polaris 2 motorhome, travelling north through the Macedon Ranges towns of Romsey and Lancefield. It's surprisingly green thanks to bucketloads of unseasonally late spring rains.

When I set about mapping out our route, the goal was to travel down roads I'd never driven along before. I've ticked off every possible exit out of Melbourne over the years but I get my wish when we reach Heathcote and continue north past vineyards and wheatfields to Colbinabbin, where colourful new silo art depicts the arrival of the railways in 1913.

From Colbinabbin, we travel east through Rushworth to Murchison, driving parallel to a rail trail that opened in May. Then from Murchison, we trace the Goulburn River past peach, pear and apricot orchards into Shepparton.

Try as I might, I can only ever recall visiting Shepparton once in my life, despite it being one of regional Victoria's largest population centres. Notable among its limited portfolio of attractions is the Shepparton Art Museum - described by a friend as "Victoria's second-best regional art gallery" after Bendigo's.

After a quick look around the gallery, we're back on the road. So far I've done all the driving, content to putter along at a safe speed for a vehicle that's longer and heavier than I'm used to. But when the wife slips behind the wheel she drives like a crazy woman, at one point reaching 85. In the coming days, even my pace improves as the highways open up.

We're back in familiar territory when we roll into Rutherglen, one of country Victoria's grooviest towns, with a shopping strip that includes wine bars, a brewery and an enviable selection of boutique accommodation, including the recently renovated Victoria Hotel. For that, it can thank its bounteous collection of historic wineries that are known for producing world's best fortified wines and bold reds.

A tour through the facilities at Morris Wines, including its swanky new cellar door, is first on our list, followed by a pre-dinner tasting at James & Co's street-front cellar door and wine bar. Then we finish off with a gourmet meal at newly hatted restaurant, Grace.

Stay: Ball Park Caravan Park, Corowa; ballparkcp.com.au

Distance travelled: 309 kilometres

After 24 years of marriage, you think you'd know everything there is to know about your life partner, so you can imagine my disappointment when mine reveals herself to be a cold-blooded killer. When a juvenile brown snake slithers out onto the road near Henty, the score is immediately 1-0 to the wife.

From Corowa to Sydney, every road we travel on is virgin territory. The Olympic Highway connects Albury with Cowra then continues onto Sydney, adding just 100 kilometres to the journey compared to the Hume. But unlike the Hume, the Olympic cuts through the middle of every town along the way, offering tantalising peeks at our rural townships.

Lunch beside the Murrumbidgee River at Wagga Wagga is followed by visits to Junee's Liquorice and Chocolate Factory and cricket legend Donald Bradman's birthplace in Cootamundra. Each town has been impressively tidy and it's no different in Young, the self-described cherry capital of Australia.

Stay: Young Tourist Caravan Park; youngtouristpark.com.au

Distance travelled: 434 kilometres

We're anticipating a long day of driving so we're up early. Rolling fields of canola, wheat and barley flank the highway until we call into the peaceful hamlet of Carcoar, snuggled into the grassy folds of the Belubula Valley.

As we approach Bathurst, our plans to tear around the Mount Panorama Motor Racing Circuit in the motorhome are scuppered by the staging of an event. With the suburban snarl of Sydney up ahead, I speed straight past a statue of "The Lithgow Flash", Marjorie Jackson, then continue on through the Blue Mountains without stopping. It takes us three hours on clogged roads before we reach Sydney Harbour at Blues Point.

Sydney is where the wife flies home to Melbourne. She's replaced by the brother, who's not at all keen to share the van's double bed with me. He's extremely grateful for our upgrade to a recently opened two-bedroom cabin overlooking Lane Cove National Park. So am I.

Stay: Discovery Parks Lane Cove; .discoveryholidayparks.com.au

Distance travelled: 197 kilometres

We're deliberately taking the high roads back to Melbourne, passing over three mountain ranges on a meandering route. However, getting out of Sydney is our immediate goal.

When mapping out our route each way, I mostly used Google Maps, opting to avoid all freeways and toll roads, as well as the Hume and Princes Highways. In Sydney, that means slow going through its gritty southwestern suburbs. The brother is fascinated and declares each one in succession his new favourite neighbourhood - the sort of places where he'll find real-life stories of people who have done it tough. He'd rather hear the backstories of shop owners or bar patrons than look at a waterfall, whereas I like the waterfalls.

Somewhere along the way, an assortment of busy thoroughfares with misleading names like Remembrance Drive funnel us onto the Old Hume Highway as it cuts through Camden and Picton and enters the Southern Highlands. Jacaranda tree litter sprinkles the tarmac as we ease into Bowral to pay homage to a cricketing great. I've already seen his birthplace in Cootamundra, now the Bradman Museum fills in the remaining years.

I tell the brother about a spectacular waterfall down the road in Morton National Park and he practically wags his tail in delight. Fitzroy Falls tips over a sheer sandstone escarpment into the Kangaroo Valley and with the winds gusting fiercely, it resembles a horsetail wafting in the breeze. In my mind, hiking to lookout points is far better than conversing with barflies.

After a sharp descent through dampened forests into the picturesque Kangaroo Valley, we continue on to our caravan park alongside the Shoalhaven River in Nowra. A five-kilometre section where we drive along the Princes Highway is unavoidable and it's the only time my rules are broken. Being a rock and roll kind-a guy, I manage to cope okay.

Stay: Shoalhaven Caravan Village, Nowra; shoalhavencaravanvillage.com.au

Distance travelled: 312 kilometres

The direct route to Cooma travels largely along bumpy gravel roads that we weren't aware of beforehand - a Google Maps failing. It's not ideal in a motorhome.

Braidwood is alarmingly busy when we limp into town and park outside a bakery that's doing a lively trade from Canberrans commuting to the coast. The drive through bucolic farmlands towards Pike Saddle, the highest point along the road at 1243 metres, is lovely, though jarring, and there's a disproportionate amount of roadkill along the way.

As just the second town we pass through for the day, Cooma feels like Paris compared to where we've come from. The gateway to the New South Wales snowfields is also the headquarters for the Snowy Hydro scheme powering the eastern seaboard and a free tour, offered every hour on the hour at the Snowy Hydro Discovery Centre, helps us appreciate the scale of our country's main renewable energy source.

Kangaroos graze beside Lake Eucumbene and an echidna ambles through the grass when we arrive at the Buckenderra Holiday Village for the night. Gale-force winds rock us to sleep.

Stay: Buckenderra Holiday Village, Lake Eucumbene; gdayparks.com.au

We push on, passing wild brumbies grazing by the roadside and following the course of the Tumut River until we stop for lunch at O'Hare's Rest Area. Somewhere along the way, we exit the national park.

The morning chill in Lake Eucumbene is a distant memory when we order ice-creams in sunny Jingellic, a border town beside the Murray River with a general store and a pub. The Bridge Hotel is a hidden gem - 100 years old and perched on a shady river bend. For a gold-coin donation, visitors can camp next door.

We follow the Murray downstream as far as the Hume Dam at Bonegilla, after which the salivating promise of homemade pizzas and craft beers leads us directly to Bridge Road Brewers in the historic gold mining town of Beechworth.

Stay: Lake Sambell Caravan Park, Beechworth; caravanparkbeechworth.com.au

Distance travelled: 340 kilometres

Before a final climb over the Victorian Alps, we spend an especially agreeable morning at Darling Estate's new cellar door in the King Valley, where host Grace Darling regales us with tales of the family's wine-growing exploits while tipping the fermented fruits of their labour into our glasses.

Our last pitstop is at Powers Lookout, named after bushranger Harry Powers, who mentored Ned Kelly and used this natural vantage point to spy on the local constabulary down in the King Valley. With no time to linger in Mansfield, an agricultural service town and access point for the ski fields and mountain bike trails at Mount Buller, we press on towards Yea, then veer south through Flowerdale and Whittlesea, away from the beaten tracks until we reach home.

The writer was assisted by Star RV, G'Day Group and Victoria's High Country