Early morning, Tarra-Bulga National Park Story and images by Kevin Moss The Strzelecki Ranges don’t get a lot of love in bushwalking guide books or blogs, with Wilsons Promontory on one side and the Australian Alps on the other, this mountain range is often overlooked when planning a walk. Over the years I’ve poked around the Strzelecki’s a bit, driving the Grand Ridge Road a few times and walking at Mount Worth, Morwell National Park and Tarra-Bulga National Park. The 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires decimated large areas of the Strzelecki Ranges and part of the response to help get the local communities back on their feet was some government money for a community organised long distance walking track, the Grand Strzelecki Track. Basically the Grand Strzelecki Track links Morwell National Park with Tarra-Bulga National Park before heading out from Tarra-Bulga on a series of one and two day loops….
Track Chat
Walks of discovery in the Great Forest, National Parks and hidden wild places of the Strzelecki Ranges.
Story and images by Deborah Sleight The Tarra Valley Loop is section three of the Grand Strzelecki Track, it is a 22km loop starting at the Tarra Bulga Visitor Centre in Balook. Before doing this l would say the Mt Tassie Loop was the hardest section l had done so far but now l say this was the hardest so far. It killed me on the descents, and the last 5km felt like 10km. I started the hike at 9am, it is just over a two hour drive from my place. The Visitor Centre has a beautiful spot to stop for a picnic, with toilets and picnic tables. But l needed to move it because this hike was going to take close to eight hours to walk. Link Track I decided to go anticlockwise so when l got to Drysdale Track l was going down the step descent and not…
Story and images by Deborah Sleight I first read about the Grand Strzelecki Track on a website called the bushwalking blog. If you haven’t heard about this site you must look it up. Neil the guy that put it together also wrote a book about hikes along the Great Ocean Road, that’s how l found his site. The website has a heap of info on all the walks he has personally done. I then started researching the track on the internet and ordered a set of maps. I would of loved to have done the full track in one hit but l couldn’t convince anyone to come with me and didn’t feel comfortable going by myself on this one. The track is 100kms long and has just a few river crossings (okay a lot). I studied the maps and realized l could do sections as day hikes. There…
Story and images by Daniel Broadbridge There were three of us; Glenn, Matt and myself (all Sale and District Runners), who decided to go for a run in the Park, because if you need to do a long run, why not do one where there’s stunning scenery and some gnarly hills to match? We are all from Wellington Shire (about an hour away from the Tarra Bulga) so we didn’t have to get up too early to get out running in the morning. We arrived at the Visitor Centre in Balook at 7.30am, to find out we were the only there (which isn’t surprising), only to step out of the car and immediately froze our butts off. It was about 13° C when we left home, the car thermometer when we stepped out of the car said it was 7° C. So just a tad bit chilly. But man,…
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TESTIMONIAL
“Hi, I’m Aki and I am 10 years old. I walked the Mt. Tassie Loop on 20/12/13 with my family. We started at the Tarra Bulga National Park Visitor Centre and got onto the West Face Track. Then we climbed to the Mt. Tassie Picnic Area and finally took the Duff Sawmill Heritage Trail and finished at the Visitor Centre. It took us seven and a half hours to walk the 18kms.
One of my favourite places was the waterfall where we stopped for some food and a drink. There were beautiful trees round it and the waterfall is beautiful although it is small. My other favourite place was the picnic area. The track was steep and I thought it would take forever.
The view from the picnic area was beautiful because it was high in the mountains. We had lunch there while admiring the view. There was a blackwood forest on the Duff Sawmill Heritage Trail. I felt great, because of all the birdcalls. I found a pair of Lyrebird feathers. At first I thought they were dead fern fronds and I was surprised when I noticed they were Lyrebird feathers. Everyone was very impressed.
Around the end, I realized my heels were hurting more than at the start so I decided to have a look at them and found big blisters on both heels. There were a still a few kilometres to go so I pushed on and got to the end. I felt like a hero to have finished an 18 kilometre walk! Apart from my blisters it was fun.
The most fun part about it was the stunning sight from the highest points on Mt. Tassie. In all I was happy that I finished the walk.” by Akitoshi Harvey.