 |
| Looking across Port Phillip Bay towards Arthurs Seat. For a mid winters Melbourne day the weather was pretty good. |
Last week's dose of man flu is hanging around unfortunately, I even pulled a sickie from work one day this week. I seem to have had a fairly rough trot health wise over the last couple of months, starting with my monumental mountain bike stack, of which I’m still getting over, and now this bloody cold. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be putting myself to the test a little as I’ve got a ‘Feral Style’ walking trip planned up into New South Wales which will include a 4 day walk where the overnight temperatures have been dropping down to -6 for the last week, like I said that should test out all my ailments! Today though I was looking for something a little easier and a lot closer to home.
 |
| We parked near the ferry terminal in Sorrento. |
My fall back option when it comes to ‘easy and close to home’ is generally a walk on the Mornington Peninsula, so today we decided to head down to Sorrento and go for a stroll along the coast to Blairgowrie. Parking the ute near the ferry terminal we had meandered our way a few metres towards Blairgowrie when we and our first extended stop for the day,
Sea Shepherd had their tent set up on the foreshore and had volunteers down along the beach cleaning up all the plastic and cigarette buts. There are two charities that I regularly support and Sea Shepherd is one of them (Bush Heritage is the other) so it was good to stop for a bit of a chat this morning.
 |
 |
| I'll get around to this walk one day. |
|
Heading off again we followed the path above the beach passing the rotunda and the Baths Café in quick succession. The rough plan today was to follow tracks slightly inland of the beach up to Blairgowrie and then follow the waterline back to Sorrento in the afternoon after lunch. The only issue with this plan was that there isn’t a continuous, way-marked track along the foreshore, so the walk up to Blairgowrie was a little exploratory in a couple of spots as we disappeared into the coastal scrub only to find ourselves at a dead end. With the Point Nepean Road on one side and the water of Port Phillip Bay generally no more than a couple of hundred metres away on the other side, you can’t really get too bushed on this stroll. Following access trails today we headed through the Foreshore Camping Reserve generally keeping as close as possible to the cliff tops as we made our way along to Sullivan Bay, while we occasionally had to improvise a little when it came to the route, at least staying near the cliff tops was giving us some nice views out across Port Phillip Bay.
 |
Sorrento Baths.
 |
We followed a variety of paths through the foreshore camping ground.
 |
 |
| If camping on the foreshore of Port Phillip Bay is your thing then I'm thinking this is a very nice piece of real estate to plonk your tent on. |
|
|
|
After dropping almost to beach level as we passed behind Sullivan Bay we soon climbed a little again as we walked a short section past the very flash houses on Point Nepean Road, unfortunately these houses are all protected like Fort Knox with high fences around them, I did consider scaling a tree to practice my Feral Paparazzi skills but common sense (yeah, Sam’s common sense;) eventually prevailed. Jigging back towards the water after a hundred metres or so beside the road we headed to the Collins Settlement Site, this is the site of Victoria’s first European settlement back in 1803. Apart from a few old graves there isn’t a lot left over from the historic settlement, but Parks Vic have done a good job though with plenty of informative signs scattered around the area.
 |
This is some of the priciest land in Victoria.
 |
 |
Looking back to Sorrento from the Collins Settlement Site.
 |
Apart from 5 unmarked graves here is not a lot left over at the site of the old Collins Settlement.
 |
| Looking across Cameron Bight towards the Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron - (squadron hey, that sounds pretty serious!). |
|
|
|
|
With lunch beckoning we left the old settlement site and now dropped down to water level again at Cameron Bight, heading for the bright lights of Blairgowrie. Our walk now followed sections of track through foreshore camping areas again interspersed with a couple of sections on the shoulder of Point Nepean Road where flash boating clubs had taken up the whole coastal reserve. Being almost slap bang in the middle of winter Blairgowrie was pretty sleepy this afternoon so consequently we had no trouble finding somewhere to have a bit of a feed, eventually deciding on Fergie’s Blairgowrie Cafe which proved to be a good choice.
 |
Cameron Bight
 |
 |
Blairgowrie in the middle of winter is fairy quiet spot.
 |
| It looks like I've just seen Putin's Pee Pee tape of Trump;) |
|
|
|
With lunch finished it was time to start heading back to the ute in Sorrento. Like I mentioned earlier to make the walk into a bit of a circuit we and decided to walk back to Sorrento along the coast line, we’ll that was the plan anyway although I wasn’t overly confident that we’d be able to get around the cliff lines at water level, even with it being low tide. To start with though we had a long section of beach to follow as we headed north west along Cameron Bight, the weak winter’s sun not doing a lot to warm up the wind coming off Port Phillip Bay. After passing the Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron and the more low key Camerons Bight Boat Club we arrived at Eastern Sister, our first cliff line.
 |
I've almost got this one done in day walk sections, the whole walk in one go will have to wait until I retire I think.
 |
Blairgowrie Beach
 |
| The Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron. |
|
|
We had some good news here though in that it looks like coastal erosion has necessitated the need to build a sea wall around this bluff and not wanting to waist an opportunity they have built a walking track on top of the new sea wall. Now while coastal erosion which is no doubt exacerbated by climate change isn’t normally a good thing I suppose you've got to grab small positives where you can, yeah I’m a glass half full kinda guy! So the first bluffs were successfully rounded at sea level and after negotiating all the private jetties and walking the length of Sullivan Bay we arrived at Western Sister.
 |
 |
The very recently opened Dorothy Houghton Walk skirts around the cliffs of Eastern Sister.
|
|
Western Sister doesn’t have a flash new sea wall protecting it so it feels a little more natural. Looking at the bluff from Sullivan Bay I was doubtful that we’d get around this one with dry feet and that feeling didn’t change as the cliffs started to tower (relatively) over our heads. We decided to head as far as we could and if it looked dodgy we’d retrace our route back to Sullivan Bay and take our inland track back. These crumbling sandstone cliffs are pretty dodgy really so we more or less walked with the water lapping at our boots staying as far as possible way from the base of the cliffs. After passing through a little rocky choke on the point, the coastline towards Sorrento came into view and it looked like we’d get through at sea level after all. With Sam striding off into the distance and me wandering along at my usual sloth like pace we made our way past the Sorrento Sailing Couta Boat Club and within ten minutes or so we were once again back at the ute, happy after another nice little walk.
 |
| Private jetties on Sullivan Bay. |
 |
The cliffs of Western Sister need to be rounded at sea level.
 |
 |
| Sorrento has just come back into view. |
|
|
The Dirt.
According to my GPS we walked 9.6 kilometres and climbed 239 metres on todays easy walk, I’m thinking the distance sounds about right but the climbing seems a little optimistic? We parked at Sorrento near the ferry terminal which was no drama in winter with all day parking allowed, in summer it’s two hours only though. We ate at Fergies Blairgowrie Café for lunch, the coffee and burgers were nice and the service was good. The only walking notes that I know of for this walk are by Ken Martin in his ‘Walks of the Mornington Peninsula’ book. This was a nice little stroll and proved to be pretty much everything I needed to warm up for some more serious up coming adventures I think.
Relevant Posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment