Wilson’s Promontory National Park is one of my favorite bushwalking venues. It is only three hours drive from Melbourne and has beautiful scenery – a combination of beach and forest with over 125 km of walking tracks. It is the place where many Melbournians have been introduced to bushwalking (backpacking). The tracks are well defined and the campsites are well established. It is a comfortable environment for walking however it suffers from being just a little too popular.
‘The Prom’ is the most southern area on mainland Australia. During WW2 the Park was used as a commando training base. When I first walked there in the early 1970’s, one could light fires at the campsites and camping was unregulated. Now it is very controlled – the National Parks Service charge a fee for overnight camping and regulate the numbers of people at each campsite. This preserves the environment and helps with the major problem of this National Park in that it is just ‘loved to death’. However, The Prom is no longer a place where one can easily get away from others – if that is your wish on a bushwalking trip. However, the superb scenery well and truly makes up for the few people that you will meet along the way.
There are a many good walks around the Prom. It is the type of place that one could easily go to alone. There will always be someone around, the tracks are so well marked that you don’t even need a map, and the rangers patrol the out-stations regularly.
These pages describe the walks that we have undertaken around ‘The Prom’ over the years.
