You Yangs

Walk 6 from "Day Walks Melbourne"

Length: 11.3km, circuit
Time: 3.5 hours
Closest Town: Lara

Up to Flinders peak is a bit of a beginners trail and hardly worth calling a daywalk. The view from the top is worth going up. In addition, the geoglyph is worth seeing and you can walk up to the geoglyph via the Branding yard trail.

Nothing else to say.

The Geoglyph:

Mt Everard Circuit

Walk 27 from "Day Walks Melbourne"

Length: 18.8km, circuit
Time: 5 hours
Closest Town: Kinglake

Long walk. Not that interesting. Worth doing only if you want to do a long walk.

Estate Spur

Walk 36 from "Day Walks Melbourne"

Length: 8.1km, circuit
Time: 3 hours
Closest Town: Alexandra

Coller Bay from Estate Spur Track:


We headed off to Marysville for a few days. From there, we went up to Lake Eildon National Park to do the Estate Spur walk. Lake Eildon is huge (on its way to empty). I was hoping for rain, while we were up there, to watch run-off through the creeks. However, it only threatened to rain and a few drops fell, but not what I was hoping for. It was a cloudy day and the tracks were damp as it had been pouring quite hard the day beforehand.

The tracks would have been a lot more interesting when the lake was full because you would have been on the waters edge, nowdays the tracks are ~100 metres from the waters edge. However, the views from Estate Spur track are definitely worth the walk. Absolutely breathtaking! The views from Estate Spur give you an understanding of the size of the lake.

Lake Eildon from Estate Spur (Same view as in Day Walks Melbourne):


I would love to know where the Cerberean caldera stretches out as the park is situated on the edge of this geological site. Note: the Cerberean caldera is an extinct 27km volcano that lies in the area. I googled it but couldn't find a lot on the site.

Impressions: 9/10

Wilhelmina Falls

Walk 32 from "Day Walks Melbourne"

Length: 12.9km, circuit
Time: 5 hours
Closest Town: Glenburn

This was a nice walk. The falls are definitely the highlight as you could imagine from the name. It was drizzling on this walk and it was nice to be out walking. Other than the falls, it is scrubby bushland and a fairly easy walk.



The falls are worth seeing though by themselves. The way that the water spreads out across the rock is really beautiful and creates a silvery lake-like appearance.



Impressions: Excellent

Cathedral Range State Park - Revisited

Part of the Southern Circuit
Region: Cathedral Range State Park (nearest town Buxton)
References: Vicmap Outdoor Leisure map

Okay, we headed back to the Cathedral Range for the day. It was a sunny day up there in the Ranges and was a good walk. We walked from Sugarloaf Saddle along the Razorback. We then turned back as we neared the Farmyard, as we had to get home early due to other commitments.

Wells Cave:



This time we went up to the peak of Mt. Sugarloaf via the Wells Cave route and that was well worth it. We didn't do the Wells Cave route last time because we had our overnight gear with us and it would be very, very difficult to get through the cave with such big packs. However, with day packs, it was easy enough. It is definitely worth doing the Wells Cave route as it was lots of fun.

Impression: Excellent.

Bird's Land

Walk 22 from "Day Walks Melbourne"

Length: 10.5km
Time: 3.5 hours
Closest Town: Tecoma

This was just a short walk and hardly bushwalking but fun otherwise. Good for a Sunday afternoon stroll. There is not a lot to note about the walk. There are a few good views of the city along the circuit and there is quite a bit of bird life at the start of the walk near the lake.

Along the way:


Impressions: Pleasant.

Cathedral Range State Park

Northern and Southern circuit walk
Length: 19.5km, circuit
Duration: 2 days (~5 hrs of walking each day)
Region: Cathedral Range State Park (nearest town Buxton)
References: "Day Walks Melbourne" (Walk 33, 34 with modification), Vicmap Outdoor Leisure map, and park notes

The Razorback:

-- 1st Day --
This walk was fantastic. We walked from Cooks Mill to Jawbone Car park. We then headed up Cerberus road and then up Canyon track along the Razorback to the Farmyard, where we stayed overnight. Climbing up Canyon track with 15-17kgs (we carried all our water for the two days) on your back is quite the challenge and made for very sore legs the next day. Climbing up canyon track required rock scrambling and we aren't 100% sure that we were on the "trail" all of the time so it might of been harder than it should have been but we had fun. The views along the Razorback are worth every sore muscle. We arrived at the Farmyard and setup camp. We were the only ones there and it was really peaceful.

The Farmyard view out to the west at sunset:

-- 2nd Day --
We headed off after breakfast at around 8:45am. We went up towards the Cathedral Peak but took the right hand track and went down to Neds Saddle. We then climbed Neds peak and had lunch there. We then headed down onto Neds Gully Walking track to Little River walking track back to the car. The second day was less breathtaking because you are essentially scaling down the mountain range back to the gully, where the main campsites are. We didn't go up to the Little Cathedral or the Cathedral Peak and decided to leave that for another trip. We hope to come back one day and goto Wells Cave and also to scale up to the Cathedral peak.

Looking south from Neds Peak at where we have come from:


Impressions: Great views and physically challenging.

Tree Fern Walk

Tree Fern walk outlined in "Day Walks Melbourne"

Length: 9.3km, circuit
Duration: 3 1/2 hours
Region: Bunyip State Park

This was a really good short walk. I would definitely do this again. The variety of the walk was fantastic from dry brushland to 'rainforest' like gulleys. The "Tree Fern Walking" Track is one of the nicest parts of the walk. However, for anyone who does this walk there are a few things you should know. Firstly, some of the tracks are hard to find because they are obviously under utilised and overgrown. Parker Link Track is one of the tracks that is hard to find especially from Steege Road. Also, the other major thing to take note of is that Triangle Road and Link Road have been signposted by state parks as back to front in contradiction to what is shown on vicmap, melways, and google maps. In other words, some maps show Triangle Road as Link Road and Link Road as Triangle Road. Let's just say that this made us feel very lost when we came across "Link Road" . We thought that somehow the we were 2kms from where we should be and previously I was quite sure of where we were. Argghh! :)

Rating: Excellent.

Andrew Hill Circuit

Andrew Hill Circuit walk outlined in "Day Walks Melbourne"

Length: 11.4km, circuit
Duration: 4 hours
Region: Kinglake National Park



It was fantastic because it was raining. Finally, some decent rain in Melbourne. It was also our first walk of the year. Because it was raining, the cloud cover was settling in on the top of Andrew Hill, which offered an encompassing atmosphere that lead to some nice pictures. The walk up to Andrew Hill is the hardest part of the walk. I cannot comment on views because quite frankly it was too foggy/cloudy to see much further than 10-15 metres ahead.



Rating: Exceptional because of the weather. Probably an average walk on a normal day.