Goin' Feral One Day At A Time: Tyakil Nature Walk, Wyperfeld National Park

Typical Wyperfeld National Park country.

Recently Sam and I visited Wyperfeld National Park for a day, our main purpose was to walk a long loop out around Lake Brambruk and Outlet Creek. After spending most of the day walking this 20 kilometre loop and being taunted by the amazing number of birds in the area, I decided to swap lenses on my camera and head out on the much shorter Tyakil Nature Walk late in the afternoon to see if I could get any reasonable photos of our feathered friends. The Tyakil Nature Walk loops around a series of small dry lakes that provided a bountiful home to the Wotjobaluk People back in the day when the climate was a lot wetter, Tyakil ba Tyakil' was the name given to Outlet Creek by the Wotjobaluk People.

The Tyakil Walk starts off by heading through this avenue of red gums towards Black Flat.

With Sam electing to stay with the ute and have a bit of a nanna nap, I headed off on my own along the sandy track towards Black Flat. We'd walked this initial section earlier in the day on our long walk and the red gums along the edge of Black Flat were teaming with birds, so of course when I came back late in the afternoon on this stroll, murphy and his law dictated that I'd barely see one of my feathered friends. Not to worry though, maybe I could stalk the grazing roos and get a good photo of them, err no, even my marsupial mates were playing coy now. Oh well, at least I still had the nice desert scenery to check out in the late afternoon.

Black Flat is bordered by these nice sand dunes.

Black Flat is a large grassy depression that is occasionally filled with water when Outlet Creek flows, we're talking once every ten or twenty years or so. Talking to a ranger earlier in the day he was saying that the massive floods of a few years ago that re arranged the Grampians didn't even make it this far north, so you have to wonder if Outlet Creek will ever flow again this far north. One of the problems with no floods is that the red gums can't germinate, so as the old ones die off we aren't getting any new ones to take their place. Apparently there has been talk of a pipeline like they run from the Murray River to Hattah Lakes, but Wyperfeld is a long way from the Murray River. The environment is competing with the irrigators for the precious water and the environment doesn't vote, so I'm a bit pessimistic about the future of the red gums of Wyperfeld.

After crossing over the grassy depression that is Outlet Creek I continued meandering my way along the edge of Black Flat, passing a few old canoe trees where the local indigenous people had chiseled the bark from the trees for their boats. The track along here is bordered by a nice red sand dune that was looking good in the late afternoon light. After checking out an old bore left over from our more recent European Settlement I continued on towards Round Lake, this lake like Black Flat and Outlook Creek is really just a grassy depression. These dry lakes with there lush covering of green grass seem to be popular places for the local wildlife, and indeed there was a mob of kangaroos grazing on Round Lake when I approached, unfortunately the roos were very skittish today and took off before I could really get a good photo.

There is a bit of old European History on this walk, this is the remains of an old bore, that is Black Flat in the back ground.

There is a bit of indigenous history as well, the local Watjobaluk People used stone axes to carve out canoes from these old red gums, times were a little wetter back in those days it seems.

Round Lake.

Leaving Round Lake the track heads up and along a dune before starting to drop down to Little Jack Flat, I did manage to get a couple of photos of the local roos along here, something that may please any overseas readers but will probably have any Australian readers wondering why I bothered. Even though kangaroos are basically a dime a dozen in Australia I still love to photograph them, they are definitely a unique animal that we are lucky to have them in such huge numbers. Most of the roos made them self scarce fairly quickly but there was one big buck that held his ground for awhile, you wouldn't want to tangle with one of these as they'd do some serious damage.

Even the sometimes drab mallee trees were looking good in the late afternoon sun.

This big boy on Little Black Flat held his ground for awhile.

With the sun rapidly sinking in the west I crossed another couple of large grassy openings, the early evening light giving the country even more of a park like appearance. With recent rain this semi arid country was definitely looking in good nick, with plenty of animals and birds enjoying the great conditions. After almost completing the circuit I eventually managed to get a photo of one of the local galahs, it's bright colours standing out against the early evening sky. After checking out a couple more dunes I wandered back to the ute and woke Sam up from her nanna nap, pulling off my boots I settled back into the drivers seat for the 6 hour trip home, arriving home just after midnight after what had been a great day.

The sun was slowly setting in the west as I made my way back to the ute.

After crossing a couple of these grassy plains the track dropped down to the car park.

The Dirt.
I walked 6.1 kilometres and climbed 66 metres on this easy walk. Wyperfeld National Park is a long way from Melbourne, around 450 kilometres away actually so it takes a little commitment to get there, once you are up there though Wyperfeld National Park makes for a special spot to walk in the cooler months, avoid it over summer though as its baking hot. The Tyakil Nature Walk has something for everyone really, there is indigenous history, European history, lots of interesting flora and fauna and also plenty of interesting semi arid scenery to be seen, some of the sand dunes are particularly photogenic in the late afternoon light. I used the notes out of Take a Walk in Victoria's National Parks by the Daly's, the book is out of print now though, Parks Vic have a lot of stuff on line about Wyperfeld National Park as well.
Relavent Links.
Desert Discovery Walk, Little Desert National Park, 2016