Refuge Cove to Tidal River, Southern Circuit, Wilsons Promontory National Park - March 2017

Refuge Cove.

Well the rain that we’d been expecting arrived last night, from around midnight the drumming of rain on the tents had lulled us to sleep. Waking up this morning and extracting myself from the tent I was greeted by a grey morning at Refuge Cove, luckily though the constant precipitation appeared to have largely moved on and we packed up and ate breakfast with only the occasional light shower scudding through. James was up early and ready to go this morning, I was a little more relaxed as we had a reasonably easy day in front of us, well in theory anyway. Our day actually turned out a little harder than we anticipated, but I’ll get to that later.

By the time I'd walked the short length of Refuge Cove beach the sun had made an appearance.

With James straining at the bit to set off, eventually I was packed up as well and ready to go, only to wander thirty metres to the beach and stop to take some photos of the boats sheltering in the cove. Heading along the small beach we climbed up past the boaties camping are, spending a couple of minutes checking out some of the famous yachts that have sheltered here over the years. Steeply climbing away from the camping area we traversed across a short headland before dropping down to North Refuge Cove, the track thankfully only traversing the soft sand for fifty metres before once again climbing away from the water.

The boaties camp is worth poking around for a bit.

North Refuge Cove

With the sound of the waves lapping on the sand of North Refuge slowly receding we started the gentle, but fairly long climb up to the highest point of the track between Refuge Cove and Sealers Cove above Horn Point. The grey skies were holding off fairly well so far his morning with just the very occasional light shower passing through, just because the sky was overcast and we had the odd light sprinkle of rain didn’t mean that it was cold, the temperature was still in the low twenties I would of thought, so we were still sweating up a storm on our climb. Rockier ground signalled that we were about to top out above Horn Point, the large open slabs gave us extensive views up and down the coast, and also a grandstand view of the weather coming through.

The turquoise water of North Refuge receding through the trees as we climbed again.

Our first view up towards Five Mile Beach.

Sealers Cove is just visible.

After a bit of a break to take in the scene we set off towards Sealers Cove, this section of track always seems to take forever to complete, Sealers Cove is within view for around an hour before you actually set foot on the sand. The track though is a good one, once off the rock slabs above Horn Point it descends gently through some fairly dry forest. The open forest along here giving us plenty of opportunity to look out over the waters of Sealers Cove, the good news being that our views were now more often than not bathed in sunlight. After what seemed like an eternity, eventually I arrived at the Sealers Cove Camp, only to find no James. James had set off like a startled rabbit again after we had left the lookout and I’d expected to catch up with him here, oh well with no sign of him I figured that he must be making a break for the sanctuary of the ute.

The drier open forest along this section of track allowed for plenty of views of Sealers Cove.

Conditions were still very unsettled.

Dropping onto the sand of Sealers Cove I was confronted with the next obstacle, Sealers Creek. With it now being more or less high tide it took a bit of work to rock hop my way across the creek without getting my boots wet. Safely across Sealers Creek with dry feet I was about to set off along the beach when out of the trees that protect the camping area came James, it turns out he was in the toilet when I’d wandered through camp. Once James was safely across the creek we both set off along the beach towards the spot where the track heads inland and heads towards Windy Saddle. Now while we had both managed to cross Sealers Creek without getting our boots wet the beach walk at Sealers Cove at high tide managed to soak our feet in the salt water, the Sealers Cove beach is very narrow at high tide and we had to time our run around protruding trees, needless to say we didn’t time the waves that well!

Sealers Creek

James trying to keep his feet dry.

Sealers Cove, I've spent many a relaxing night perched on the rock looking at the stars.

We might have got across the creek with dry feet but we didn't survive the beach at high tide.

With wet feet we left our last beach of our walk and started off towards Windy Saddle, the spot where we would cross the east-west watershed of Wilsons Promontory. Before we climbed up to the saddle though we walked what I think is the best section of walking track in Victoria, the 3 kilometres of duck boards that lead through the primordial Sealers Swamp. Arriving at the crossing of Black Fish Creek we stopped and refilled our water containers for the climb ahead. With the sound of thunder now reverberating around the surrounding hills this seemed like a good spot to pull the pack cover on, although unlike James I left my gortex jacket stashed safely in my pack, it might be going to rain but it was still way too hot for me to be walking up hill with a waterproof jacket on.

Leaving the beach our second crossing of Sealers Creek was a bit easier!

The Sealers Cove duck boards...three kilometres of beautiful walking.

Black Fish Creek

It’s not long after leaving Black Fish Creek that the duck boards ran out and we commenced the crux of todays walk, the 300 metre climb up to Windy Saddle. Like most of the climbs on this stroll the climb up to Windy Saddle is a fairly well graded affair, normally you get a few views back down towards the waters of Sealers Cove to stop and take in, today though we got a good view of the sheets or rain coming down. Climbing higher we started to get into a little bit of misty cloud which added to the atmosphere a bit. I haven’t done this circuit since Wilsons Promontory suffered floods of biblical proportions a few years ago and I was interested on how the country around here had pulled up, at the time there was talk that this track may never be re-opened. The first spot I got to that I noticed a huge difference was the little waterfall gully that the track passed through, the pretty little waterfall and ferny grove is now gone replaced by what only can be described as an erosion trench many hundreds of metres long and around fifty metres across, not only that but the track builders have had to engineer a set of stone steps to allow walkers to descend the ten metres or so into the trench to cross it. From the old waterfall the track started to pass through a series of these erosion gullies as we made our way through the mist up to Windy Saddle.

It's a fairly long climb up to Windy Saddle.

The view across the valley was of sheets of rain today.

This use to be a beautiful waterfall in a ferny glade.

Windy Saddle is just around the corner.

Our arrival at the misty Windy Saddle signified the high point of todays walk, sitting on the picnic table we had a bit of a snack and a drink while we contemplated what should of been the last section of our walk, the walk out to Telegraph Saddle Carpark. This section of track undulates a bit as it traverses steep slopes, eventually we dropped out of the cloud and got our first views for a day and a half of the ocean to our west. The other notable thing that I noticed along here was the amount of damage the floods had done to this section of track as well, were talking erosion gullies 100’s of metres long and sometimes almost 100 metres wide, I suppose the only good thing was that the floods had wiped out everything in there path so at least those open spots allowed for some great views.

We were well and truly socked in today on Windy Saddle.

James heading off towards Telegraph Saddle.

There was plenty of evidence left from the floods on this side of the divide too.

We've dropped out of the weather now.

Looking west towards Bass Strait.

By now we were looking forward to a cold drink, so after one last climb we were pretty happy to arrive at the Telegraph Saddle Carpark. After asking one of the punters up there to take a photo of us we wandered over to the bus stop, this is where our mood deteriorated a bit! Being smack bang in the middle of a long weekend it seemed like every man and their dog was up at Telegraph Saddle, with maybe 60 day walkers waiting for the bus it quickly dawned on me that the quickest way back down to the ute at Tidal River was going to be walking, f#*k! Now a 3 kilometre road bash is bad enough at the best of times but after having already walked over 65 kilometres over the last three days a bitumen road wasn’t what my feet were looking for. What do you do hey? Not much really but set off down the hill, ironically enough in bright, hot sunshine. While the hard road gave our tender feet a bit of a hard time at least it made it easy to look around and take in the view I suppose, still I was pretty happy to wander into the long term carpark at Tidal River and take the boots off for good.

Hey, hey we're finished......or not!

There were masses of people crowded up at Telegraph Saddle waiting for the bus....so we walked down.

At least we had time to take in the view.

The Dirt.
We walked 20.2 kilometres today and climbed 688 metres on what turned out to be another hard days walking. If you get lucky and catch the bus down from Telegraph Saddle then you can subtract a bit over 3 kilometres from the day. Over the course of the three day walk we walked 69.6 kilometres and our total climbing came in at 2677 metres. Normally this walk is done over 4 or 5 days, obviously the shorter the time frame for the walk the harder the rating, the way James and I did it I’d rate it as a hard walk, but don’t forget I am old and broken:) There is no shortage of published notes for this stroll with Mr and Mrs Chapman, Mr Thomas, Mr Tempest, Mr and Mrs Daly as well as Lonely Planet all publishing notes to part or all of this walk - it’s definitely a classic.
Relevant Posts.
Day 2, Roaring Meg to Refuge Cove, Wilsons Promontory National Park, 2017.
Day 1, Tidal River to Roaring Meg, Wilsons Promontory National Park, 2017.
Magazine version of this walk.

Trudging the last few metres....all was good in the world again!

The group photo on a misty Windy Saddle.