Road trippin' with my two favourite allies

Day 5: A small lie in before going to pick up a hire car, which was a Hyundai something or other and heading south east of Melbourne. I first journeyed through the lush ferns of idyllic places with names like Emerald and Cockatoo. The beauty came abruptly to a halt at the town of Pakenham, which seemed dry and dusty and had lots of building work going on. I then ventured further south through Koo-wee-rup and onto the South Gippsland highway. The landscape here was dry and quite agricultural, in places golden ridges and hills appearing in a similar vein to those in California. At North Foster there was a lookout where I could see my final destination in the distance – Wilsons Promontory National Park.

The Prom, however, would wait for a full day tomorrow, so instead I found my hostel in Foster, which was a cute, cosy place, and then headed to the coast outside of the national park. First off was Waratah Bay, however some sea fog moved in and prevented me from sunbathing, though I did dip into the water. Moving on, I entered Cape Liptrap Coastal Park, which was a place of low scrub and heathland, punctuated by stretches of white sand. This is at the small town of Walkerville.

The road then turned north and eventually a turn off led to Venus Bay, which seemed to be an endless expanse of sand disappearing into the distance.

I headed back to Foster, only to miss my turning due to some roadworks…the detour was some 40 km or so, but it was a pleasant drive through some rolling countryside and I eventually rediscovered Foster where I was subject to a random breath test! It was gone 8pm, so Foster actually seemed to have closed, apart from the pub where I had a pretty lousy dinner.

Day 6: Sharing a room with one old guy and two Germans is a recipe for heavy snoring, and it was with not a great deal of sleep and several insect bites that I awoke not so ready for a full day of driving, bushwalking and pottering about on beaches down at Wilsons Prom. I decided I might as well leave early as there was no way I was going to sleep and drove down south through the early morning light and low cloud.

Entering the national park, it wasn’t long before I came to a clearing full of kangaroos munching away. The road then became a bit more winding as it crossed over hills and back down to the coast. The sun was beginning to break through in places as I neared Tidal River, the centre of the park.

Now Wilsons Prom is a bit different to the rest of Victoria, in that it was actually part of Tasmania many moons ago and broke off and joined the mainland. It was certainly more rugged than I imagined, with some steep, dense hills rising from the sea. The coastline is a mixture of rocky headlands, huge dolerite boulders and fine sweeps of white sand. I sampled a bit of all this on a walk from Tidal River to Squeaky Beach, so named because the sand is so finely composed that it genuinely squeaks when you walk on it. The mist and low cloud lingered around here, so it was really quite natural and unspoilt at this time of day.

After this walk I headed back inland and decided it was time to climb one of the hills – choosing Mount Bishop. The walk gained height gradually and passed through clutches of mountain ash, eucalypt and cool temperate rainforest, where a couple of noisy yellow tailed black cockatoos resided. It was a bit overgrown in places, but I made it to the top for some lunch with the many annoying flies around here. You could see both to the coast and across to more bushy ranges in the distance.

As the skies were brightening, I returned to Squeaky Beach via a nearby car park and took a well earned rest on the dazzling white sand, where more flies decided to eat my bare flesh.

The afternoon really felt like holiday mode, stopping off at lookouts and walking down barefoot to beaches every five minutes on my way out of the park. Back outside of the Prom I stopped off at a small settlement called Duck Point, where a Wallaby accompanied me on the road down to the shop, which thankfully stocked ice cream. I drove back to Foster via Fish Creek and picked up some fish with masses of chips for dinner, full and contented and happy to chill out in the garden of the hostel and pick up more insect bites!

Day 7: Again, a bit of a cloudy start but it was time to drive back to Melbourne, taking a different route amongst rolling farmland interspersed by eucalypt forest and giant ferns via the town of Miraboo North. Before I knew it I was on the Princes Highway and traffic increased back into the Melbourne suburbs and to Bayswater, where I dropped off the car after clocking up some 750kms. It was back onto public transport to the airport and a flight across the Bass Strait to the Tasmanian capital, Hobart.