During the opening scenes of Episode 3, we see archive footage of the boats sailing into Melbourne, however the footage appears to actually be of Wellington Harbour (New Zealand). The wharf and shots of the hills in the background seem unmistakably like Wellngton, especially the shot that shows a city nestled against the hills. Having also lived in Melbourne I can't picture where they would have been taken there, does anyone from there know?
Do the end credits show reference to the archival footage? (my copy cuts off before the credits end)

As an ex-Brit(now Kiwi) living in Wellie, that certainly sounds like the harbour rather than Melb, relevant ep hasn't ired here yet but I'll keep an eye out, maybe it was the only footage available.

sooooo what if they used New Zealand as a filming ground for it lol, it was properly cheaper and easy to do there. did you know Lord of the Rings wasn't filmed in middle earth, it was in New Zealand :O:O:O:O

Pardon? LOTR wasn't filmed in Middle Earth?

of course it was.

New Zealand is Middle Earth

Xena might want to disagree with you about that... it's the musical Land of Illusia long before Frodo was born, duh!