Great South West Walk - western half

The Glenelg River in Victoria is gorgeous, a wide river meandering it's way through a gorge, limestone cliffs, surrounded by dense eucalypt forest and pine forest - and - barely a building or road in sight. It's here that we spent the Easter, walking the western half of the Great South West Walk.

Great South West Walk, Lower Glenelg National Park and Discovery Bay Conservation Park

UPDATE January 2012

I've now completed the whole Great South West Walk hiking trail. Read the second blog entry about the eastern half from Mt Richmond to Portland and back to the Glenelg River.

• View Google Map of entire Great South West Walk trail


• Download the Great South West Walk GPX map files for your handheld GPS unit as a navigational aid to hike the trail


• Download the Great South West Walk KML files to view the trail in Google Earth.

I've paddled down the river three times before, I never imagined that dense eucalypt forest also held a walking trail and walker's campsites.

We walked from Moleside Picnic Area down to Murrells walk-in campsite, up, down, and along the meandering trail. The following day we pushed out the kilometres to reach Simsons walk-in campsite - not quite the isolated campsite that Moleside was, this one is only three kilometres from Nelson. People wandered past walking their dogs, a few 4WDs drove past on the dirt track. Dissapointingly - because I thought I had seen this campsite whilst paddling down the river before - there was no river view for this campsite.

The following day we divided into two groups, Graham and myself pushing out along the beach - after a stopover at the Nelson General Store - to Mo M Beong Lake campsite (also spent Mombeong, or Monibeong). Steve and Krystyna took a more leisurely pace, camping at a campsite midway along the beach. The beach walking was long but beautiful. The guidebook described the sand as "pleasurably hard" which sounds somewhat erotic - I can assure you it wasnt, erotic that is. We took the inland route into Mo M Beong Lake and the campsite, we really enjoyed that route and coming up to the lake. A swim was prevented by the lack of appropriate underwear or all the other car campers around (ok so that hiking underwear went in the bin after this walk).

We made the fourth day our final. We sat eating lunch at Swan Lake campsite, beside the lake, well we think, the location of the actual hike-in campsite was ambiguous, certainly of the campsites we had seen this one had the poorest facilities - all the others we had seen were very good. The nearby car based campsite and surrounding sand dunes were trashed by the tyres of dune buggies. Never have I seen this kinda of wanton damage to a national park from vehicles. We walked on, towards Mt Richmond. We were to camp somewhere ad hoc, to balance the days a little. As we decided to focus on the hours left to walk to the car at Mt Richmond, rather than the kilometres left, we were easily able to make it back to the car by around 4pm, and make that drive into Portland for a pub meal.

Someone asked how it compared with the Great Ocean Walk, well, it may not be a fair comparison. They are different environments. The Great Ocean Road didn't get that name by accident. I love the Glenelg River, but this walk comprises maybe four elements: river; beach; coastal cliffs; forest. In the western half of the trail we did, we walked the river and beach sections. The Great Ocean Walk passes through a more diverse range range of ecosystems, but Great South West Walk is still worth doing, perhaps just not something to rage about. It is much easier walking as the terrain is generally flatter. Despite being on my "To Do List" for a long time, we were only doing this walk now because we couldn't access Wilsons Promontory due to flooding. We met and camped with other walkers, they had intended to do some of the Grampians over Easter, but likewise, couldn't due to flooding. We will get back to finish the eastern half, but being so close to Adelaide I'm not sure when, Christmas maybe (being so close to home it isn't hard to organise a trip there, so I would prefer to use annual leave on trails further away.)

View in full screen format Download GPX file - for use as a navigational aid in a GPS unit Download KML file - view in Google Earth

Stats	Great South West Walk - western half
	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Monday
	22/04/2011	23/04/2011	24/04/2011	25/04/2011
	Moleside Creek Picnic Area to Murrells Hike-In Campsite	Murrells Hike-In Campsite to Simsons Hike-In Campsite	Simsons Hike-In Campsite to Lake Mo M Beong Campsite	Lake Mo M Beong Campsite to Mt Richmond
Distance	25.15km	27.01km	25.62km	32.1km*
Start Time	9.16am	7.52am	7.43am	7.49am
End Time	3.52pm	2.55pm	2.53pm	4.13pm
Moving Duration	4h38m	5h10m	4h52m	6h08m
Stationary Duration	1h24m	1h22m	1h48m	1h52m
Moving Average	5.4km/h	5.3km/h	5.3km/h	5.2km/h
Overall Average	4.2km/h	4.1km/h	3.8km/h	4.0km/h
Oodometer	25.1km	52.2km	77.8km	109.9km*
*About 600m longer than actual trail, meadering around Swan Lake campsite looking for water