The Grampians Peaks Trail is a 164-kilometre walk traversing the Grampians National Park (Gariwerd). It provides panoramic views north/south along the ranges and east/west across the plains. Walkers will experience a stunning diversity of landscapes, including rocky ridges, alpine communities, dry and wet forests, heathlands and rivers. There are always some wildflowers blooming and Spring puts on a dazzling, ever-changing display.
Grampians Peaks Trail, Gariwerd, Australia
Prelude
The Grampians Peaks Trail is an epic walk, full of beauty, grandeur and challenge. Along its 165 kilometres, it climbs over rugged peaks and crosses tough, rocky terrain as it traverses Gariwerd from Mt Zero in the north to Dunkeld in the south. Are we being foolhardy, setting out on a 13-day journey into the heart of this ancient, craggy country?
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Frenchmans Cap. The name itself has an aura; its presence in the landscape is dazzling. When the light is on it, the famed white quartzite peak is visible to ships out at sea. Then there’s the walk that bears its name. Regarded by some as one of Tasmania’s most challenging multi-day walks, the return journey to the domed summit of Frenchmans Cap is 46 kilometres. A little daunted by its reputation but with several days’ grace and the forecast of fine weather, we decide to spread our COVID-clipped wings and fly south to walk this wild trail.
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December 2021
The Surf Coast Walk stretches from Fairhaven to Point Impossible on the northern fringe of Torquay. It’s a walk we’ve done before, but this time we’re starting in Lorne, 16 kilometres to the west of the waymarked trail. Our plan is to walk 55 kilometres over two days, taking in deep draughts of coastal wildness as an antidote to this pandemic-restricted year.
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Easter holds the promise of granite landscapes and white sandy beaches. Short walking days, languid afternoons swimming in crystal clear, turquoise water. But, like every plan made in the last 12 months, this one goes awry. This time, it’s flood damage, not the pandemic, that closes Wilsons Promontory’s walking tracks and has us scrambling for an alternative. Our walking companions, Marc & Miranda, suggest a walk in the high country. So, why not as high as possible and climb Mt Bogong, Victoria’s tallest mountain.
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The Grampians Peaks Loop beckons. After a year of confinement, the allure of wandering through wild landscapes for days on end is irrestible.
Starting at Mt Zero and extending southwards to Mt Abrupt, the yet-to-open Grampians Peaks Trail is a 160-kilometre-long walking path. As a precursor to its launch, a 35-kilometre loop walk showcases a section of the new Trail. It features some of the most spectacular scenery in the Grampians, including the Wonderland Range, the Pinnacle and Mt Rosea.
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This is a two-night / three-day 36.6km circuit walk that can be shortened to an overnight walk by arranging transport from Borough Huts Campground back to Halls Gap.
(Note: the full length of the Grampians Peaks Trail, a 160km 13-day walk, is now open).
For the three-day walk, we carried 2 days’ food by having breakfast at a cafe the day we started and arrived back in Halls Gap for a late lunch on day 3. Fuel stoves must be used at Hiker camps. Water tanks are located at each camp. Parks recommends treating the water.
Day 1: Day 1: Halls Gap to Bugiga Hikers Camp: 8.6km. A well-made track that climbs nearly 500 mostly well-graded meters. It takes in some of the most popular sights in the Grampians including the Grand Canyon and the Pinnacle, so expect plenty of day-walkers in the Wonderland Carpark to Pinnacle section. The trail marking is very good but you’ll need to pay attention when leaving the Pinnacle as there are a few tracks and not every intersection is marked.
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Back in March, when our knowledge of pandemics was, at best, naive, we picked up a map for the Surf Coast Walk, thinking to do it before winter closed in. But even as we cycled towards home, a tempest was whirling around us and uprooting normality. Borders were closing and Melbourne was going into lockdown. In July, a ‘ring of steel’ was imposed, prohibiting travel out of the city.
Melburnians, steadfast in adhering to the lockdown restrictions, were rewarded for their forbearance. In November 2020, with no COVID-19 cases for weeks, the ‘ring of steel’ that held us to within a few kilometres of home came down. Soon afterwards, we caught a train and bus to the coast, southwest of Melbourne, and breathed in deep draughts of wildness.
The Surf Coast Walk traverses the clifftops, beaches and Moonah woodlands that hug the coast between Fairhaven and Point Impossible. For almost 50 kilometres, over two days, we wandered along the edge of the continent, absorbing the intense blue of the sea and sky, the dusky green of the trees and the red and yellow ochres of the crumbling cliffs.
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Melbourne is in lockdown. We can only walk for an hour a day, within a five-kilometre radius of home. Once out in the world, we cannot come close to another person or stop to enjoy a coffee or a glass of wine. And we must wear a mask. The seductive aromas of coffee roasters and spice shops, the fragrance of starry clematis, sweet floral wattle and heady jasmine are lost to us.
Touch, taste and smell, all compromised by what it takes to keep COVID-19 at bay. Light, however, is not denied to us. The blue hour, the golden hour, solar noon, the twilights. If we walk at different times of the day, perhaps we will see things in a different light and deepen our sensory experience of these strange times. Read More
Winter 2020 unfolds as a season of discontent. Borders are closed. The joy of walking long distances through unknown, beguiling lands is lost to us and, as the winter progresses, even the hope of a sojourn in tropical Queensland is extinguished.
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