NSW (& VIC) – Tasmania trip 2021: 11 – 13 March

Thursday Port Melbourne/Walkerville
Arrived in Port Melbourne at 6 am, and we were off the boat half hour later, and on our way along the south-east coast towards the southern coast of NSW, which we will travel up towards home.

We are booked in 2 nights at a paid campground near Wilsons Promontory, which is one of the more famous Victorian National Parks and located on the Bass Coast.  We stopped for coffee on the way and had our lunch on Phillip Island. This island is connected to the mainland by a bridge and is very well-known (and hence almost always incredibly busy except today!!) for its little penguin parade, and this has extended tourist attractions over the years, which now accounts for the bustling visiting crowds.  We stopped at a nice winery and tasted some lovely wines, but as this was not our overnight destination, we kept moving after that. We are finding that we have forgotten the greater distances on the mainland (after Tasmania) and take some getting used to!

Our campsite at Walkerville South is a long stretch along the coast, with part beach and part rock, backing on to beautiful green trees and hilly bush.  We cycled as far as we could go and hopped on to the hard sand on the beach to go further. Arno practiced some more drone photography of some of the rock formations in the water. So we are now on the north side of the Bass Straits, which we enjoyed so much on the south end in northern Tasmania.

Once again, a beautiful day, and the sun just adds so much to that water colour.

A quiet night in our caravan park, but expect a lot more visitors for the weekend, as the ‘Prom’ is a very popular huge hiking destination and this natural campground geography really lends itself to great friends and family group camping.  Meanwhile, the wallabies, blue wrens, crimson rosellas and echidnas keep us entertained.  We will explore Wilsons Prom tomorrow.

Friday – Wilsons Promontory
And what an absolutely glorious day again!!  We set off early with our lunch packed to discover that it was still almost an hour’s drive to the Prom (didn’t realise this when we booked our campsite, just a bit off in calculating distances again)! In Victoria (unlike NSW and Tasmania) all National Parks are free for day use, a decision that was made in 2012 to get more people moving and healthy. We sure think it’s a wonderful incentive, and honestly believe many people take full advantage of all our magnificent nature has to offer.  Droves of tourists (and currently they are only local and domestic Australian residences as our borders are still closed to foreigners!) are out and about.

We decided on one of the many different tracks and set off at 10.40 am from Tidal River carpark to Squeaky Beach (so named because the sand is so fine that it squeaks under your feet), and a little further up along the coast where we sat and had our lunch, being treated to one of those splendid views, before returning to Tidal River by around 2 pm.

Some additional history and statistics of the Prom can be found in this link.

Back via a beer-garden stop we arrived back around 4pm to a much busier campsite with lots of kids and groups enjoying the start of the weekend.  We ate and more or less got the van ready for take-off tomorrow morning, because our next stop is a half-day trip….

We committed to staying at friends we haven’t seen for a long time on Monday in NSW, and we really have to get a move on as we realised it’s another 10hours’ drive from where we are now, and there were also a few VIC stops on the bucket list which we may have to just fly through and revisit in the future..!

Saturday – Bairnsdale/Lakes Entrance
We arrived in Bairnsdale, Gippsland around 1.30pm, and set off not long after to visit the very popular Lakes Entrance, a beautiful spot with lots of natural waterways – the Gippsland Lakes. It boasts a lovely long esplanade, with an old (though over the years several times rebuilt/reinforced) bridge over the water to the dunes of Ninety Mile Beach which fronts onto the Tasman Seashore.

Walked around and the temperature dropped from 31°C to 20°C in a matter of 5 minutes, with gusting winds. We stopped at the shops, and within 15 minutes it had passed! Back at the campsite, we found a few broken tree branches, but no damage, it seemed to have been short and not too severe. It did start to rain again around 6pm and believe it’s to continue till early morning…. Dinner at a local Indian restaurant which was tasty!

Moving on tomorrow again.