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

Wilson's Promontory - Tidal River Madness

I arrived back at my tent and noticed a few others having taken refuge in the school camping area, no worries there was heaps of space :-) Knowing that I would be in for a big Saturday, I quickly sorted out some food, brushed my teeth and happily crawled into the Hubba for an early night. I managed to sort of fall asleep before a (camping) "party" arrived at the site next to me .. what sounded like 4 couples in 2 cars decided that the spot next to the tiny little Hubba tent would be perfect for their reunion. Ah .. well, at first I was confident that the lovely young people would stop shouting and obviously be so considered that they would turn the car's lights off as soon as they had managed to raise their tents .. since those beams, apart from lighting up their efforts with the tents, were making it look like daytime inside my Hubba.

In the end I had to make my way out of the tent and give the happy campers the most unhappy Jutlandian grumpy look I can muster without adding sound effects. It partly worked - they turned the light off, but kept on drinking and chatting. Having made it out of the tent I decided to take advantage and visit the bathroom. Oh boy, Oh boy what a change a couple of hours make! The campsite was more than full, but with a steady stream of desperate wannabe campers flowing in from Melbourne, Tidal River campsite had turned into a cauldron of madness with people and cars moving around between the closely packed tents seeking out those last few square meters of space needed for a tent.

Returning back at my tent after my little evening walk, I realized that I would be a rough night. Two additional camping parties had arrived and taken a liking to the area bordering the Hubba - I was surrounded and there was no way out!

The seagulls woke me up early Saturday morning - I had managed only a few hours of sleep, but with only one full day in the bush I could not afford wasting time sleeping - and seriously, I would be happy being out of the way before my neighboring campers began waking up. The plan of escaping was dropped as soon as I looked out of the tent. There was no way I could maneuver the oil-ship sized Ford Falcon out of the campsite - in fact is was nearly difficult to navigate myself through the chaos of guy ropes, tents, cars, beer cans, chips and other seagull feed.

I ended up having a great morning around Tidal River after all! A walk along the beach followed by a shorter excursion into the bush made me nearly forget about the population density around my tent. A visit to the Visitor Centre cheered me up even more, the rangers were incredible helpful and I managed to get an overnight camping permit for Sealers Cove, which can only (unless you have a boat) be accessed by following a 10.2km bushwalking route across the peninsula .. that should be sufficient to scare off most of my still sleeping neighbors. :-)

Wilson's Promontory, Victoria - A Sneaky Long Weekend Escape

Suddenly I found myself with a golden chance of taking a closer look at the Victorian bush. I had attended a conference in Melbourne and was not expected back in Sydney before Monday morning, giving me 2.5 days of freedom :-) A combination of computer trouble and general busyness meant that I was very badly prepared and when leaving for Melbourne I hardly knew what my plans would be for the weekend.

It all nearly cost me the trip - Friday afternoon I visited 3 car rental companies before I managed to get a way too large and way too expensive Ford Falcon Wagon with so much space that I would not have needed to bring my tent!

Already in the south-east corner of Melbourne and having to deliver the car back Sunday afternoon I decided that taking on the Great Ocean Road would probably be too much of a mouthful and that Wilson's Promontory would be the wiser target instead.

After a very pleasant drive through some lovely Victorian landscape I finally found myself at the gate ready to enter "The Prom". An early warning sign was a ca. 15 min queue .. in two rows! Queuing to get into a national park a Friday afternoon - what was happening here??? When I finally arrived at the counter the very friendly girl could shine a bit of light on the situation: The weather forecast had predicted absolutely fantastic weather for the entire weekend resulting in a migration of Melburnians to the Prom!

Since I had arrived relatively early she encouraged me to drive to Tidal River and pitch my tent for the night and "unless I wanted to sleep in the bush I would have to find somewhere else for the rest of the weekend" - I Proudly announced that I would be happy to take a night in the bush, but was met with a scrutinizing look and I realized that sitting in a Ford Falcon with only a hard shell suitcase and a plastic bag of apples as the only luggage, wearing a shirt, black trousers, black shoes and still having my conference name tag on - I did not look like the usual deep-bush-camper. I though about starting to explain about how small and light a tent I had (one of my favorite stories), but with 50 cars behind me, we agreed that I should pay for one night and have a little chat to the rangers in the morning about the possibility of going bush Saturday to Sunday. :-D

Arriving at Tidal River I realized how big this place was - 484 camping and caravan sites - surely this could not fill up(?) It proved a bit hard at first to find a good site, but the girl had told me to just pitch my tent anywhere, so I sneakily razed the little MSR Hubba in the school zone
- the sign said that the "school" restriction was only enforced Saturday and Sunday so I would be fine. Managed to raise the tent in record time and used the last light to run down to the water to take a few photos for this blog post. Fantastic spot, after a busy busy conference in Melbourne and a bit of stress finding a car, driving out of Melbourne without using toll roads and not really knowing where I would sleep tomorrow, I felt that I could finally relax and deal with it all as it came. Those Victorian beach sunsets works wonders!

Walking back to the tent, planning an early night. I was absolutely unprepared for what the night would bring :-D To be continued ..