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Published: October 24th 2015
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Wilsons Promontory National Park
Our blogger on the Mount Bishop Track Wilsons Promontory (or The Prom as it is called by the locals) is one of Victoria's last wilderness areas and has been a National Park for over 100 years. It is located at the southernmost tip of the big island and offers spectacular scenery of huge granite mountains, open forest, rainforest, sweeping beaches and rugged coastlines. Great bushwalks extend from under an hour to multi-day walks and visitors can camp, caravan or stay in huts, cabins, wilderness retreats or lodges at Tidal River where there is a ranger station, visitor information centre, general store and take away food shop. Wilsons Promontory was connected to Tasmania by the land bridge which existed some 10,000 years ago and still has a lot of similar features to the north east coast of Tasmania specifically and Tasmania in general. It's a wild place, just like Tasmania.
After checking in with the visitor information centre to confirm our booking from the previous night, we took a walk around the town of Tidal River and down to Norman Beach. From there, we walked along the beach to the actual river, Tidal River and then walked along the river to the footbridge which leads on to a
Wilsons Promontory National Park
A rockface on the way to the Mt Oberon carpark track around the coastline. We chose to walk further up the river, on a new boardwalk which allowed us to get close to the river. We met people walking and some people fishing and saw some ducks before heading back to the campground and the bus. We then drove out of Tidal River and up the hill to Telegraph Saddle where there is now a carpark with tracks leading south to the lighthouse and other locations, eastwards to Sealers Cove and Refuge Cove and the shorter track to Mount Oberon. We chose not to walk to the summit of Mount Oberon as there was a lot of cloud around, some of which was sitting on the summit.
After lunch, we decided that a short walk was called for so we headed out to the Mount Bishop track and walked a part of that. We took a few photos but the birds were proving to be quite elusive. We then returned to Tidal River where we had secured a powered site for the night. We moved the bus to one of the twenty odd powered sites (there are over 400 camping sites in total at Tidal River) and connected all
Wilsons Promontory National Park
Georgi at one of the lookouts to Bass Strait on the road to Tidal River of the electronic toys on to the grid to charge.
The next day we had a sleep-in and then decided to stay another night so that we might do a slightly longer walk. We couldn't extend our stay at a powered site and had to move back on to a non-powered site before we headed off on our walk. We chose Lilly Pilly Gully walk and then connected it back up to the Mount Bishop walk instead of retracing our footsteps. Lilly Pilly Gully has a mixture of what is on offer at The Prom with heath land, eucalypt forest and a boardwalk through warm temperate rainforest with a creek.
We were quite tired when we returned to Tidal River and were pleased to have an early night. Tomorrow would be another busy travelling day.
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