Wilson's Promontory - Getting Out and Getting Home

I managed to bank an enormous sleep and still get up before sunrise - beautiful stuff! After a quick breakfast I packed my gear and started walking. The night before I had chatted to some fellow campers that had informed me that I had been lucky arriving at the Sealers Cove campsite at low tide and that my early start meant that I would have to negotiate much more water when crossing the river that isolate the campsite from the main part of the beach - they were right :-D

It had actually worried me a bit; not that I was afraid of crossing the water, but saltwater can have a nasty effect on how your skin deals with long walks .. I decided to take full advantage of my early start - no one else awake and I could safely pull a Full Monty securing that not a single piece of cloth would be wet .. Managed to get backpack and camera gear safely across in two goes with water reaching my waist - nice cold morning :-)


Even the seabirds were a still struggling to wake up so I managed to get closer than I had been at any point during the weekend. After using a bit of precious freshwater cleaning the most saltwater sensitive areas, I got back in my outfit and hit the track.


Best guess is that I had managed to start walking around 6am, which gave me plenty of time to enjoy the walk and still make it to Tidal River in good time. It was very pleasant walking indeed, away was the heat and humidity that had made it a struggle the day before and I truly enjoyed the climb and the views.

The shuttle bus running between Mount Oberon car park and Tidal River would begin its route 8am. I was not going to make the first trip, but I had calculated that I was likely to see the first lot of early morning bushwalkers on their way east towards Sealers Cove and beyond around Windy Saddle. Like clockwork I ran into three small groups of walkers, last set having a little break at WS adjusting an annoying socks and very keen to hear a bit about what they had actually begun .. after 2.5 hours of lonesome wander I was happy to tell about the rain forest, the river crossing and the tiger snake - do not know if that was actually what they wanted to hear :-D
I was happy to see them, since it meant the bus was running and I would be able to get back to Tidal River and the Ford Falcon easily meeting my deadlines.

Great guns! Finally leaving Wilson's Promontory I even had time to stop at some of the lookouts along the road. No doubt it would have been fantastic having a day or two more, I could easily have used more time walking and exploring other parts of the park - even tried to see a few of the rare birds that supposedly live in the park(?) But considering the situation I felt that I had taken full advantage of the opportunity given and made a normal weekend into something quite special. One day I will be down there again for a bit of bushwalking - probably not during high season ;-)

Wilson's Promontory - Sealers Cove Wildlife

It took a while to find the campsite - it was located just south of the beach on the other side of a little creek, that at low tide could easily be crossed with water levels not much above knee height. After my camping experience the previous night I was very keen on getting my tent up in a "private" area :-) I did not need to worry, the campsite was absolutely fantastic with small isolated areas where you could truly feel happily isolated.

Tent up and ready for a bit of adventure, I started walking south and had probably done less than 200m before I encountered the good sized and very photogenic Tiger Snake above. Snakes in general are very secretive and hard to spot, they know you are coming long before you have a chance to get a look at them and they nearly always choose to disappear without sound or trace. I would love to claim that my luck with the sweetheart above was due to my bush-ninja skills, which allows me to float through the bush without impacting the ground, however, reality was that I had been standing still like stone for quite a few minuets trying to get pictures of a bird, when the tiger snake crawled onto the path few meters in front of me - how lucky can you be? :-D I probably had more than 2 minuets in company with the TS before it disappeared into the scrub on the other side of the path and was gone .. needless to say that I now how quite a few Mb of TS pictures.

The bird above - behind the bush :-) - was not the one I was stalking before the snake incident, but probably the most exciting bird I saw during my Prom excursion. Judged on the pattern on the chest I guess there is a good chance of it being a Bassian Thrush. I managed to get better view when it flew, but no pictures.


Good walking! It was great not having to carry the backpack along and I managed to cover quite a bit of ground. The bird count being low was easily forgotten with a great selection of lizards around included a few that I do not recall having seen before.


The one above looks like an indigenous painting with stripes, dots and great colors. As the sun disappeared I returned to camp, once again planning an early night. I was supposed to return the car before 4pm Sunday, I wanted good time for the drive so I was aiming at leaving the prom before 12pm .. before I could leave I would have to make the walk back to the car park at Mount Oberon, catch a bus to the campsite and also I was expecting that a shower would be high on the "things I would like to have time for"-list :-D .. so I was planning to leave the campsite not later than 7am.

I had to find a better home for the little spider above before I could start cooking and while choosing my campsite I had been very happy with the presence of a good solid log, which looked like it would do the job of a comfy sofa .. as I started cooking the little fellow below popped its head out of my planned resting place and after some careful consideration I decided that the log was not to be used by me that evening .. I guess the combination of a tiger snake sighting and the fact that the potential sofa in question had many holes of various sizes made it an easy choice to stand up while eating. :-D

Wilson's Promontory - Sealers Cove

It was a great walk to Sealers Cove! Slightly more demanding than I expected, probably due to the warm weather in combo with a backpack, that had been packed for all possible conditions .. it was heavy. First part of the walk was uphill towards Windy saddle and went through areas that were recovering from a bushfire that raged through in 2005. The fire was started by a back burn attempt going horrible wrong - for some reason it was decided to start a little fire just around Easter when the park was packed full of happy campers ... 600 people had to be evacuated!!!

The peninsular nature of the park i.e. surrounded by water on three sides and the fact that fires are very unlikely to spreed out of the park, means that fires will often be left burning till the die out naturally. During the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria 2009 the prom was once again hit by a bushfire which burned approximately 25% of the park. Luckily no one died, but enormous areas of bush was damaged and neighbors to the park was once again not impressed by the Governments plans to start back burning again.

After enjoying the views form Windy Saddle the track dived into the lush dark green rain forest covering the east side of the park and I could once again start the battle of trying to get enough light through the lens to picture some of the wildlife living in this dark place.

I saw surprisingly little flying wildlife on my way through the rain forest, next to no birds - guess the exceptional warm weather was an excellent reason to sit still in a shaded tree somewhere and relax - Reptiles on the other hand was well represented, I managed to spot quite a good collection of these heat hungry critters sitting on the forest floor where the sun managed to penetrate the foliage.

The last 2.5km of the walk are flat and most of it happens on boardwalks negotiating the swampy area between the beach and the slopes up towards Windy saddle and Mount Oberon.

Good solid walking down there in Victoria, even though the return trip would include slightly more climbing I was quite confident that I would be able to scramble out early next morning, probably having quite a bit of an advantage not having to do the brunt of the walk during the midday heat. All good and I still had a good part of the Saturday to explore around Sealers Cove :-) As you have probably noticed, I like those Victorian park signs stating that you are not allowed to bring your riffle to the park - surprised? :-D