We'll I've finally got the bandages off my leg so I decided to head out on my first hardcore excursion post op. Yeah, I decided to head down the Mornington Peninsula a bit and check out Kings Falls, the rational behind that was that hopefully with all the rain that we'd been having the falls would be flowing and, more importantly the circuit is allegedly only a kilometre long. So after slowly lifting my ever growing arse off the couch, I jumped in the ute and motored down to the start of the trail on Waterfall Gully Road arriving after a nice easy 40 minute drive. Easing my leg out of the ute I was glad it had only been a 40 minute drive actually, as my leg was already doing a fair bit of throbbing, they'd be no crawling around on the ground getting photos of fungi today.
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This is why there has been so many retro posts lately, I had these on for a week.
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| This is what it looks like now the heavy bandages are off, hopefully it should be good as gold in three or four weeks, well that's what the doc says anyway. |
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This is a really easy walk, initially the route drops steadily through dry eucalyptus and casurinas with the odd grass tree to break it up a bit. After a few minutes walking the track starts to head up the steep sided valley of Kings Creek, its along here that you get your first, and probably best, look at Kings Falls through the trees. The falls had a good flow of water today but it was a little hard to get a great shot through the trees and I was definitely not going to be doing any feral off track stuff today. The water cascades down over brown granite which looks quite good with the rushing white water covering it, it's definitely best seen after rain though.
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So needless to say I was looking for a fairly easy stroll to test the leg out, 1 kilometre sounds about right (although my GPS came out at 1.7ks).
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Passing through the she oaks there are a few grass trees sprinkled around the forest floor.
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| This is the best I could do of Kings Falls, there was definitely going to be no off piste action today to get me any closer. |
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After leaving the first lookout I continued on with my throbbing leg, the next lookout is above the falls but it doesn't really give you much of a view of the falls really, it does give you a view down the valley and out to Port Phillip Bay though, although in todays overcast conditions it was nothing to write home about. Leaving the second lookout the track climbs for a few metres before coming to the turnoff for the loop back to the car park, there are extensive board walks along here which make the walking even easier, especially as the track crosses a few damper sections.
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| Some of these grass trees must be hundreds of years old. |
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As the track passes over the damper sections along here it also passes through a lot of coral ferns, which are probably the botanical highlight of the short walk. For such a short easy stroll its surprising how remote it feels, a lot of this area has never been cleared due to the rugged topography so for the the most part you've got no idea that, for all intents and purposes, the track is basically walking in a suburb of Melbourne (well the extreme outer suburbs really). After crossing Kings Creek one more time upstream of the falls the route climbs gently up towards the car park, the open forest along here allowing for some more far reaching views down the valley. With my leg throbbing a bastard I was glad to see the ute, stopping one last time to take a couple of photos of a rock while I played with my ISO settings on my camera.
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The walk passes through quite a lot of coral ferns.
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| It wouldn't be a feral walk without some kind of obstacle. |
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The Dirt.
I walked 1.7 kilometres on todays stroll and climbed 61 metres, and the good news is that my leg held together and didn't spring a leak! The Kings Falls walk is a very easy walk that it would be suitable for young kids, although be careful around the lookouts. Parks Vic have plenty of stuff online about Arthurs Seat State Park. I used the notes out of Walks of the Mornington Peninsula by Ken Martin, it's walk number 28 in his book. Either Mr Martin's or Parks Vic's notes are enough to complete the circuit as its well signposted.
Relevant Posts.
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| This is an easy, well constructed track. |
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