We had a long planned cruise with my sister planned for late December, early January 13/14, but before sitting on our bums for a couple of weeks we thought we'd do a walk first. The plan had been to spend a leisurely six days circumnavigating the southern section of Wilsons Promontory, however events didn't quite proceed as planned.
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| The start of the walk near the Tidal River visitor centre. |
Watching the weather forecast in the week leading up to our walk I was becoming more concerned by the day, the forecast was for rain and showers every day of the walk, I could see that instead of an easy walk with a lot of basking on beautiful beaches we'd be spending a lot of time sheltering in a small bushwalking tent out of the weather, oh yeah, did I mention that it was our anniversary, hmmm....
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We got glimpses of Norman Bay through the trees.
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| Sam, heading through the Tee Tree near the start of the walk. |
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After a bit of will we, won't we, we decided to head down to the Prom and at least start the walk and see if the weather improved. By the time we started the short walk over to Oberon Bay it was already late in the day and the rain was fairly constant. We made our way through the Tee Trees behind Norman Bay in the gloom, the occasional break in the trees giving us glimpses out to sea that only reaffirmed that it wasn't going to stop raining any time soon. Breaking out onto the very southern end of Norman Bay we quickly left the beach and headed out to Norman Point, dropping our packs for the side trip out to the lookout. Sam decided that it wasn't worth heading all the way to the lookout to check out more grey clouds but I pushed on anyway, Sam was right!
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Looking back to Norman Bay from the track around Norman Point.
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From the lookout on Norman Point.
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| Still smiling! |
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After retracing back to my back we continued on to Little Oberon Bay, normally one of the more photogenic of Wilsons Prom's beaches, I struggled to get a good shot today though, the situation wasn't helped by the fact that I was using my waterproof camera and not the DSLR (the DSLR wouldn't come out of it's dry bag for the whole trip!). I haven't walked in the Prom since the big floods that went through a few years ago and was amazed to see how much the landscape had changed, whole sides of mountains had been scoured away. To climb away from Little Oberon Bay now you have to traverse up and around a huge chasm that was never there before, the only good thing about the new scar was the creek that flowed down it provided another source of drinking water.
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Little Oberon Bay.
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A new bridge approaching Little Oberon Bay.
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| The new chasm running down the hill into Little Oberon Bay. |
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| The one positive is that there is now another water point. |
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Less than 90 minutes after leaving Tidal River we set foot on Oberon Bay, once again we were faced with a massively scared landscape. Growler Creek had been scoured out and judging by the rocks, the bed of the creek was now about 30 cm lower that it used to be. The side of the mountain beside it looked like it had been deposited into Bass Strait. After crossing Growler Creek we made our way up the wide expanse of Oberon Bay into a howling gale, reaching the turn off to the campsite with some relief.
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A wind squall ripping across Oberon Bay.
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Oberon Bay.
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It looks like half the hill above Growler Creek has been washed into Bass Strait.
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The old height of the bed of Growler Creek is marked dark spot on the boulder.
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| Sam pushing into a southerly on Oberon Beach. |
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The camping spot at Oberon is well sheltered in the Tee Tree, we quickly got the tent up and Sam jumped in to get into some dry clothes. I decided that I may as well stay out in the rain and start to cook our dinner, for our 23rd anniversary we had homemade dehydrated spaghetti bol, with freeze dried hot apple pie for desert, washed down with a hot chocolate and Baileys. I've had worse! After packing everything away I stripped of a dived into the tent managing to keep most of the water and sand outside. We spent the evening reading and listening to the am radio, the weather forecast wasn't getting any more promising.
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Our damp tent at the camping area at Oberon Bay.
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Cooking up our anniversary dinner in the rain.
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| Warm and dry, happy 23rd anniversary. |
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After a beautiful nights sleep with the sound of the rain drops on the tent and a long sleep in whilst we waited for those rain drops to ease, we eventually had to make a move. It stayed fairly dry while we cooked up our porridge for breakfast but by now we were over the rain and had decided to pull the pin and head back to the truck. We quickly packed up between the showers, the decision to head back gave us a renewed focus, we now knew we would be dry in a couple of hours. Retracing our outward route was fairly uneventful, the showers continued all the way back to Tidal River, of which I was fairly happy, there's nothing worse than deciding to cut a walk short due to the weather and then having the weather change for the better as soon as you get to the car.
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Next morning we packed up in between showers.
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Growler Creek.
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| Rain drops in the tannin stained water of Growler Creek. |
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As we now had four nights up our sleeves we decided to head up to Mildura for a few days in the sun. So, in the end we did spend our days basking on the beach only not on at the ocean but on the Murray River.
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The weather has cleared a bit as we approach Little Oberon Bay from the south.
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| A Wallaby above Little Oberon Bay. |
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The Dirt
You need a camping permit to camp out at the out stations on Wilsons Promontory, and I can now tell you that those permits aren't refundable. The Prom has been well and truly ravaged by flood and fire in the last decade and judging by what we saw on our aborted walk its going to take a while to get back to its old self.
The Tidal River - Oberon Bay walk is only around 12 kilometres return, a nice easy walk.
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| Approaching Norman Bay. |
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| Sam, heading through the dunes behind Norman Bay. |
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