Cobaw Forest Walk, Cobaw State Forest - August 2018

Climbing up Soil Pit Track towards Cobaw East, this is typical of the days walk, eroded tracks, open forest, big rocks and blue sky.

Cobaw Forest is a spot that I’ve never visited before so, after reading about the walk in one of Mr Tempest’s books, I decided to head up and check things out. Mr Tempest suggests visiting mid week rather than on the weekends if you want to avoid the trail bikes that infest the forest on the weekend. I’d agree with Mr Tempest on that count, my rough rule of thumb is to avoid most state parks on the weekends when their more relaxed regulations they quite often encourage my 2 and 4 wheeled bogan brothers out to play. Anyway that’s my convoluted reasoning behind visiting Cobaw State Forest after work on this Friday.

Parked on Camp Track near Ridge Road, time to set off.

After successfully locating the start of the walk (easier than it sounds on some of these less popular walks) at the corner of Ridge Road and Camp Track, I parked the ute, reset the GPS and set off on my afternoons stroll. Initially I was following the very eroded Camp Track as it climbed through the open forest, straight away I could see evidence of trail bikes and 4wd’s. The track was very badly cut up and eroded, where trees had come down bypass tracks had been pushed through the bush. While the track itself was a bit shitty the climbing was pretty easy and the surrounding bush made everything OK.

Camp Track is pretty eroded, but makes for easy walking.

I was a little surprised how much water was around today, I don't think we've had a particularly wet winter.

After climbing for awhile I turned onto the un-signposted Soil Pit Track. This track was more of the same really, if anything the climb got a little steeper and the surrounding forest got a little rockier. As it turns out a feature of Cobaw Forest is the large granite boulders that are scattered through the forest, the higher I climbed the more big rocks I started to see. Thankfully instead of two stroke noise all I had today to interrupt my revelry were bird noises…and wind. Yes, another reason that I’d decided to head north today was that the southern areas of Victoria were suffering through 100 kilometre an hour winds, although judging by the roar of the wind in the canopy above, the wind speed wasn’t much less up here.

Soil Pit Track climbs a little more steeply, although it's still pretty cruisey.

After climbing for awhile up Soil Pit Track I left the 4wd track when it started to descend and headed off track up a spur towards the high point of todays stroll, Cobaw East. The off track amble was very easy, and also very short unfortunately as the top of the mountain was more or less in view as I left Soil Pit Track. The top of the 780 metre Cobaw East is crowned by more very large granite boulders and I took a bit of time exploring the relatively flat summit area, apart from the boulders there is also one of the largest Stringybark Trees that I’ve ever seem up here, I mucked around trying to photograph it but as usual my talent doesn’t really match my ambition there I don’t think.

Climbing up a short off piste section to Cobaw East.

Cobaw East.

My dodgy photo doesn't really show it well, but this Stringybark Tree was huge.

After poking around the summit of Cobaw East for awhile I set off along the high ridge that connects it with Cobaw Middle, initially on a walking track for a few metres and then off track again. Well my notes said it was off track but my two stoke brothers had been practising a bit of ‘Toby Price off road action’ here and had pushed tracks through sections of the ridge walk. The new tracks made it easier to walk (although they didn’t all go in the direct that I wanted to go) but they took away a bit of adventure to the walk, I suppose the good news was that at least I wasn’t jumping out of the way of trail bikes this afternoon.

The ridge between Cobaw East and Cobaw Middle features a lot of these rocky outcrops.

This use to be off track along the ridge, now I had selection of trail bike tracks to choose from.

The wind was howling through the canopy this afternoon.

After one final easy climb I arrived at the 760 metre summit of Cobaw Middle. Apart from meeting another 4wd track near the summit the other notable thing about this summit was that it probably gave me my best views through the trees. In one direction I’m thinking I was looking at the distant flanks of Mt Macedon, in the other direction I was looking over to the forested hills around Castlemaine I’m guessing (both of those assumptions are Feral Facts). There is also an interesting and fairly intricate plaque near the summit which is a memorial to an early forester that use to man the fire tower up here, the plaque is definitely worth hunting out if you ever get up here.

Cobaw Middle

I'm guessing the blue smudge is Mt Macedon.

The plaque on Middle Cobaw, looks like my responsible gun owner mates took offence to it.

After snapping a few photos through the wind buffeted canopy I made the very easy descent down the 4wd track, to emerge ten minutes later onto the reasonably substantial Ridge Road. This is the road that I’d driven into the park on so I was now back in familiar territory as I headed south west along Ridge Road looking for my next track, Natives Track. Apart from the obvious use of the park by trail bikes and 4wd’s the other thing I’d noticed about the park was that the sign posting was a bit hit and miss compared to when Mr Tempest wrote up his notes, so shuffling along Ridge Road I was keeping a very close eye on my map and GPS. It turns out that it was a good idea to be concentrating as the start of Native Track wasn’t sign posted anymore (well I didn’t notice a sign anyway) and to make matters a little more navigationally challenging the tracks weren’t always named the same on my map as they were on my GPS so I was going off direction and topography a little to pick up the correct track.

I'm thinking that this is looking over towards Castlemaine.

Dropping back down to Ridge Road.

Ridge Road.

After a few hundred metres on Native Track it swung away from Ridge Road and started dropping solidly, the track is very eroded but was pretty easy for me to follow as I headed down to meet Boyers Track. Reading this is about as exciting as watching paint dry I’m thinking, unfortunately the rest of the afternoon was that kind of walking though. After meeting the sign posted Boyers Track I continued to descend, I was now walking along the a fence line at the western boundary of this section of the park, although apart from a decrepit old fence it was hard to pick the difference between the park and the private land. After reaching the low point of today’s stroll Boyers Track curved around and climbed for a few minutes to meet Boyles Road.

Natives Track wasn't signposted and was in pretty bad condition, but was easy enough to follow once I was on it.

The private land was on the left hand side of the old fence line.

Boyers Road made for a very easy climb, well when I say easy I mean I only stopped one or twice to take photos and get my breath back. Cue the harp music…I remember when I was a young bloke I could climb Mt Feathertop or Mt Bogong, probably with a pack that weighed close to 25 kilograms, without even having to stop and get my breath back, now days I need a calculator to add up the amount of times I have to stop! Anyway, like I said Boyers Road was a pretty easy climb and I was soon back up on Ridge Road and heading down to the ute. With my glass half full Feral attitude, I suppose I could say that these sections of quiet road walking made it easy to check out the surrounding scenery without worrying about going arse over or getting lost, with blue sky and a weak winters sun above I suppose today is about as good as it gets. Ten minutes or so after turning north along Ridge Road the ute emerged through the trees and the walk was over.

Taking in the scenery on my climb up Boyles Road.

Boyles Road.

Heading down Ridge Road to the ute, apart from the wind it was a magic winters day.

The Dirt.
According to my GPS I walked 10 kilometres and climbed 467 metres on what I’d rate as a medium graded walk. This is one of those walks that is OK, but probably not worth travelling too far to do, but if you are around the area it’s worth considering although I’d definitely avoid weekends and holidays. It’s a bit of a shame the trail bikes are going feral up here as the scenery is actually pretty nice and the open forest and large granite rocks make for interesting country to walk through. I used Mr Tempest’s notes out of his Victoria’s Goldfields Walks, even though the book only dates back to 2013 things have changed a bit on the ground since Mr Tempest went through I’m thinking. Some of the sign posting isn’t there any more and some of the off track sections which now have a web of trail bike tracks criss crossing them are probably the main changes from the notes. One other thing to keep  in mind with this one is that the drive in on Ridge Road could get a little sloppy after wet weather, I did the walk in a fairly dry winter and the road had a couple of spots that looked like they may be an issue to 2wd vehicles in wetter times.

Relevant Posts.

Macedon Ranges Circuit, 2016.

Mt Alexander, Mt Alexander Regional Park, 2018.

Castlemaine Gold, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, 2018.

Another pleasant afternoon's walk coming to it's end.

I used Ridge Road to get to the starting point of today's walk, I'm thinking it might get a bit messy if the weather is wet for awhile.