Wilsons Promontory is a staggeringly beautiful wild environment with some of the best spots only accessible by foot. If you’re not up to the walks that can take hours to complete, don’t worry, there are other more attainable walks to take in small bites, and spectacular vistas worth seeing and trust me, if we can reach them, anybody can.

We set up our base at the Big 4 Wilsons Promontory Holiday Park at Yanakie, just on the outside of the National Park, and from the caravan we have water views complete with swans, pelicans and other water birds, and a view of the prom.

Each morning our day started with a bright sunrise over the water as we planned for a day of short walks in the Prom.

One of the main reasons we chose this park was because you are able to have a campfire at your site, something you can’t do in Wilsons Promontory, and we were thankful for that, having a couple of nights where we could sit outdoors enjoying the ambiance and keeping warm.

The drive into Wilsons Promontory is spectacular in itself with beach views, tall timbered country and mountains strewn with boulders and rock formations. We drive as far as we can into the park, to Tidal River, where you’ll find the National Park Visitor Centre, a store and campground and it’s also the start of walks to take further into the park.

If you want to head further south however, you will need to be prepared for a challenging full day hike or camping overnight, with a hike of around 40 kilometres return. Other walks in the area can take just a few hours, including up to the highest point at Mt Oberon which offers spectacular 360 degree views of the prom, but being realistic, we chose walks that were far less taxing but no less awe inspiring.

Looking at the unforgiving terrain, it’s not surprising that this area was a training ground for Australian and New Zealand’s elite commando forces in 1941/42. The superbly fit men trained for months in all aspects of guerilla warfare in preparation for missions in the South West Pacific during WWII. These men went on to fight as Special Forces in Papua New Guinea, Borneo and other islands in the Pacific.

Knowing we’re not made of the same stuff, we take the paths more travelled and take our first walk on the Loo Ern Track which follows a part of the Tidal River Estuary for around  1 kilometre on an easy boardwalk over the river and through wetlands.

The next walk we take is the Lilly Pilly Nature Walk which is around 5 kilometres in length and takes you through heathland, eucalypt forest and rainforest environments. It’s cool and quiet except for a couple of wallabies that scurried away when we startled them, which in turn startled us. It’s a relatively easy walk with a gentle gradient here and there, but we were still pretty pooped by the end of it, so we save our next walks for another day.

A number of walks link into each other but with limited time and energy we have, we cheat a bit and drive to car parks where we can then set off on the walks, but at least this way we cover all the trails we want to do.

We start on the western side of the peninsula just above Tidal River, at Squeaky Beach and just a short walk of around 300 metres gets us to this stunning beach which does indeed squeak. The sand is so white and pristine, and the rounded grains of quartz sand make it squeak as you walk through it.  The large boulders on the beach add to its magic and unreal quality of the scene.

Picnic Bay and Whisky Bay are our next stops and both are around 400 metres from where you can park the car. They both have a little up and downhill treks to reach them but are overall easy to reach. More spectacular views greet us from lookouts that take in both bays. You can then continue on down to the sand from there.

The next walk we take is the Prom Wildlife Walk which is a just over 2 kilometre circuit walk. It’s flat, it’s easy and we spotted emus, kangaroos and even wombats here and this was during the middle of the day. None of the animals were too concerned with our presence and it was easy to get photos of them without disturbing them.  

A little trick to look for if you’re watching out for wombats is to look for their scats (poo) which unusually is square in shape. Once you find it, you know you’re in wombat country.

There are more than 20 walks of various distances and challenges that you can take in Wilsons Promontory but we were happy to have achieved the ones we did and see the memorable sights and wildlife we did. I also had another reason for wanting to visit this area and that was to finally tick off a quest I’ve wanted to complete for many years and that was to reach each continental extremity of Australia.

This trip now completes our journeys to the furthest most points on mainland Australia from Byron Bay in the east, Steep Point in Western Australia, north to Cape York in Queensland and now Wilsons Prom, the southernmost point on the map.

Tasmania is still on our list to visit!

Cheers and enjoy the walks, however you do them.

Glenys