It’s pretty much because they don’t want people going more than 5km away from their houses so as to make enforcement easier. Also, Melbourne is locked out from the rest of the state with police roadblocks due to low cases in the country and high cases in the city, so a lot of hiking spots are inaccessible.

Current lockdown rules restrict us to 5km radius from our homes.. so most likely they can't get to the hiking spots. I'm in a similar situation. It sucks!

You can only exercise for 1 hour a day, and you must wear a mask everywhere outside and they have the police out in popular rural areas enforcing this.

I'm not sure if its allowed to drive 2 hours to walk for 1 hour or not. I doubt it.

Sounds like a dystopian police state

A strict, short lockdown is far preferable to the five months so far of half assed containment that has failed to even reduce cases relative to the beginning of lockdown.

To make this work, there must be enforcement. From my observations, most spread is coming from people not following guidelines.