The Great Southwest Walk

The Great Southwest Walk is essentially a long link of walking tracks that take in the best that this part of the state has to offer. It takes in Portland, Cape Bridgewater, Discovery Bay Coastal Park and the Lower Glenelg National Park. I have done parts of the walk, and camped at various places along the walk. Here are some of the things you'll see along the way.

The first section I'll cover is from Lake Mombeong (must check the spelling on that) along the coast to Nelson. Once again we did a car pool, setting up camp at Lake Mombeong and then moving most of the cars to Nelson. Always the individual, I took an extra day off work and spent the previous day exploring the area and doing a bit of recreational four wheel driving. I also cheated a bit and stashed some food in the dunes near the halfway point of our walk.

Lake Mombeong is a beautiful freshwater lake perched just behind the dunes and is a haven for all sorts of wildlife. We had a choice of two routes, along the beach or through the dunes. The sun was hot so we chose to go through the dunes with some shelter from the low trees. The first day's walk had a variety of scenery and coastline and was quite interesting but the low point was arriving, tired and hot, at the White Sands campsite.

The campsite is next to a swamp/ lake near where the creek filters through the beach to the sea. Apart from half of the campsite being under water, there was also an incredible amount of rubbish. This opening in the dunes was the only one for several kilometres and so every bit of rubbish that gets washed up on the shore eventually gets blown/ washed up into this one small opening. The only good thing about the campsite was a toilet and fresh drinking water.

We ended up camping in a small clearing in the dunes nearby and made the most of our situation.

The following days walk was marred by only one thing, a relentless westerly wind. Walking along the beach into the wind was hard work, with no shelter anywhere. The garbage at the campsite and the strenuous walk put a bit of a damper on the weekend and half of our party returned to Melbourne while the rest of us stayed in Nelson and went on to visit Mt Gambier and the Princess Margaret Rose caves.

Plans for any return trips now exclude the section around White Sands. Alternative plans include day walks along the beach from Nelson and Going east from Lake Mombeong to Swan Lake and the spectacular dunes in this area.