Five Mile Beach, Wilsons Promontory National Park - September 1990

I'm going to tweak the way I layout the blog slightly from now on, instead of littering the post with links I'm going to try and put any relevant links in the dirt section of my posts, the theory being that you can finish one post off before clicking the link to another, as it is now you sometimes read one paragraph before being presented with a link to another walk that I did, probably back in the dark ages, I'm hoping it'll prove slightly easier to navigate. Anyway, here's another blast from the past, this is a quick story of my first ever overnight walk up in the remote northern section of Wilsons Promontory. I was accompanied on this walk by my friend Naomi and as was usual we walked after finishing our night shift off. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great on this stroll, it rained solidly all night as we worked and it didn't let up on the drive down to the car park at the end of Five Mile Road, oh well with no room to move as far as walking days were concerned we headed off from the car into the passing showers.

Day 1.     Five Mile Beach Camp       18 Kilometres.

The walk into Five Mile Beach isn't normally the most inspiring walk at the prom, its basically a road bash for the majority of the distance. Today its main redeeming feature was that it allowed us to travel at a fairly good pace, with more or less constant rain we didn't linger long on the walk in. Even in the inclement weather the open heathland allowed us some fairly extensive views down towards Corner Inlet, although the Vereker Range to our south was cloaked in cloud. The fire track is a bit of a roller coaster affair and at times you can see it snaking kilometres into the distance which can make for a depressing view if your pushing on keen to get your tent up and get out of the rain. With the majority of the route crossing low heathland the highlight of the walk in was probably the crossing of Chinaman Creek and its surrounding rainforest, this is always a welcome spot if your walking on a hot day.

Crossing Miranda Creek in the rain on our walk in.

With the rain today though we just kept our heads down and pushed on to our next notable way point, Saint Kilda Junction. This is the spot where the Northern Circuit Track used to head up over the hills to Johnny Souey Cove, if I ever find my photos of this track I'll do a retro post as the track has long since been closed for revegetation. Today though we continued on towards Five Mile Beach of which the views soon started to unfold, it wasn't the approaching coast that was holding our attention though, it was the flooded track. As the route descended towards a swampy section where the track crossed Miranda Creek we got to a section of duck boarding that was totally flooded, the tannin stained water making it a little difficult to see the submerged planks under the surface. Very slowly we edged our way across, neither of us keen to fall off the side and find out how deep the dark water actually was. After getting safely across Miranda Creek we were soon walking north along the soft sand of Five Mile Beach to the camping area tucked into the Tea-Tree above the inlet of Miranda Creek. With the rain coming down and both of us having just finished night shift it was no hardship to spend the rest of the afternoon snoozing, awakening near sunset to check out the storm ravaged beach and inlet.

Miranda Creek at the camp site.

Looking south along Five MileBeach towards Sealers Cove.

Day 2      Five Mile Road Car Park    18 Kilometres       36 Kilometres Total

The good news is that the next day arrived without the accompaniment of the pitter-patter of rain on the tents. After a relaxing breakfast we packed up camp with only the occasional shower passing through. With today being an exact retrace of yesterdays walk we were walking across familiar country, after crossing the submerged section of duck boarding we ticked off the kilometres back to the car. The weather today was a lot better, we even managed to get some large patches of blue sky which made the walking a lot more pleasant than yesterdays. Back in the day we tended to walk fairly quickly, almost as if subconsciously we were anxious to complete our walks and get back to civilisation, and this day was no different. Now days I tend to linger as long as possible in the bush, I can only put this down to being a bit more comfortable in my skin as well as in the bush than I was when I was young, well that and the fact that I'm old and broken now so I have no choice but to take it easy! After arriving back at the car we headed back to Melbourne no doubt planning our next adventure on the way.

Crossing back over Miranda Creek on day 2, at least it wasn't raining today. You can see how narrow the submerged planks were, we weren't keen to find out how deep the water was if we fell off!

That's the old route over to Johnny Souey Cove.

The Dirt.

We walked 36 kilometres on this two day walk, I suppose I'd rate this as a medium walk although its borderline easy. The camping area at the northern end of Five Mile Beach used to be (and probably still is from what I've heard), a pretty basic affair. There was no toilet and water was obtained from the creek or from a spring on the northern bank of the creek, the camping site was a sandy section in the Tea-Tree on the south bank of Miranda Creek. It was wild spot though, particularly on a stormy day, the Northern Prom is a lot different to the Southern Prom, it's different in a good way though and while maybe not as scenically pretty as the southern end, the stark wilderness of the north has its own rugged appeal to me. I haven't returned to Five Mile Beach since this walk so I guess I'm due. We probably didn't use a guide book on this walk, but we would of carried the Wilsons Promontory 1:50,000 Vicmap.

For anyone who can't quite get enough of these retro posts, here's a link to another post about a walk up in the Northern Prom that I did to Tin Mine Cove back in the glory days, and lastly here's another link to a day walk I did a little more recently to Vereker Outlook and Millers Landing, also up in the north of Wilsons Promontory National Park.

The walk along Five Mile Road can get a little depressing when you can see the route meandering along for 
kilometres in the distance. This photo is just before the road drops down to cross Barry Creek on our return walk.

By the way I'm posting this from my hospital bed, I've just woken up from my surgery. But then again maybe I'm not really awake, watching the news it appears that we are trapped in some never ending nightmare. Pity the poor, the sick, the planet, the young, the indigenous Australians, and the LBGT community. My (admittedly somewhat foggy brain) see's Turnbull getting rolled within 6 months by the redneck right. I think eventually Labor is going to have to eat that shit sandwich and start preferencing The Greens and vice-versa in some kind of a loose coalition, in the short term they may lose some seats but if the two progressive parties work together and they form some kind of coalition then they would be in a much stronger position overall. The Murdoch rags squeal about deals with The Greens but The Greens actually represent far more voters than the National's, although the News Limited Media don't seem as concerned about deals between The Liberals and The Nats. I must still be asleep though because now there saying that our Queensland brothers and sisters have re elected Pauline Hanson, its obviously all a nightmare and I'll wake up tomorrow and all will be good!