Melbourne tide times

Melbourne sits at the head of Port Phillip Bay, one of the largest enclosed bays in Australia, and the tidal regime inside the bay is shaped almost entirely by its geography. Port Phillip covers 1,930 square kilometres and has a single narrow entrance at Port Phillip Heads — a gap of roughly 3 kilometres between Point Nepean on the Mornington Peninsula and Point Lonsdale on the Bellarine Peninsula. That entrance controls everything.

9 metres. 3 metres. In the inner city, the vertical tide at Williamstown or the Yarra River mouth changes the water level by less than a metre even at the largest springs.

But all that tidal exchange — the volume of water filling and emptying a 1,930-square-kilometre bay twice a day — is forced through a 3-kilometre gap, and the result at the Heads is extreme. The Rip, as the locals call the tidal race at Port Phillip Heads, generates currents that peak around 8 knots on large spring tides. The standing waves and eddies in the race are visible from the shore at Point Lonsdale and Point Nepean; the chop builds quickly when the sea breeze or a swell from Bass Strait opposes the tidal stream.

Australian maritime law requires all commercial vessels entering or leaving Melbourne to take on a licensed pilot; the pilots board from a station at Queenscliff and work the vessel through the Heads on the appropriate tidal window. Recreational skippers are strongly advised to transit near slack water — the difference between a transit in 1 knot of fair current and one in 6 knots of opposing stream is the difference between a straightforward passage and a vessel-control emergency. Inside the bay, the picture changes completely.

5 metres. 7-metre rise and fall that exposes a limited band of rock or sand between tides. The bay's seagrass meadows, which extend across large areas of the shallow northern bay, provide nursery habitat for King George whiting and snapper; anglers working the bayside flats time their sessions more around wind direction and bait movement than tidal height, though the few hours either side of the tide turn tend to produce better results.

The Yarra River, which enters Port Phillip at the city's working port, carries the tidal signal inland. The tidal reach extends to approximately Princes Bridge in the CBD — a few kilometres from the bay mouth — where the river surface rises and falls with the bay tide, even if the amplitude is modest. The Bolte Bridge road crossing and the Webb Bridge pedestrian span over the Docklands waterways both sit within the tidal reach.

Kayakers use the inner Yarra, the Maribyrnong River further west, and the Docklands channels as sheltered urban paddling. The boat traffic — ferries, water taxis, commercial shipping transiting to the Appleton Dock and Swanson Dock terminals — requires attention in the river section. Bass Strait, to the south of the Heads, is a different environment.

The strait sits between Victoria and Tasmania and channels the Southern Ocean swells that have crossed the open Roaring Forties from the south. 5 metres), but the swell and wind exposure make it a fundamentally different coastal environment from the sheltered bay beaches. The Bureau of Meteorology operates the Australian national tide gauge network.

The Port Phillip Heads (Outer) and Williamstown gauges are the primary references for Melbourne. The predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model. 3 metres on height — model-derived, not a local gauge.

3-metre height uncertainty is a significant fraction of the total range, so treat the predictions as indicative planning reference. The Bureau of Meteorology tide predictions for Melbourne are the authoritative source for navigation and precise activity planning.