New Place, New Challenges. Part 1: Wilsons Prom, 20km Hike
Have you hiked before, of course. Have you done 20km non-stop with incline for most part, not really. Did you know what you were in for, NO.
It’s the weekend, and the temperatures have dipped to its mid-twenties. Your alarm goes off at 6am. You groan and your hand tap dances over the bedside table searching for a silent disco. You eventually switch the alarm off, curl up with the phone in hand wanting to snooze. Then you hear your cousin’s alarm go off, and you slowly push yourself up and out of bed.
Yes it is 6am on a weekend and you plan to be on the road by 6.30am for it’s a long journey to Wilsons Prom. Think 3 hours to the entrance of the reserve.
The drive is uneventful, you groan at the roadworks putting the car at 40km/h for a good 30min. You fall asleep – always great not to be the driver. When you awake, its closer to 8.30am and you are almost at the destination. But first a quick toilet bread and breakfast at a pitstop.
Soon you enter Wilsons Prom (to be exact, Promontory). You have reached Victoria’s frontier and the relatively unscathed raw beauty of nature is before you. You soon head up a trail which reads 2.5km to Fairy Cove and 4km to the tip where cliff meets sea.
Trek no. 1: Hello Nature!
You think, that’s doable! You’ve done more. You jauntily set of taking lead and soon discover the unique sandy and rocky of walking in bush trails. It will be your first time on such hiking grounds – most of your experience being forest/jungle trails.
10 minutes in and you mention to your cousin and his girlfriend, that it is a good thing your aunt chose to not go. For the incline is not a joke. Less than 10 minutes later, you get dizzy, your breath unregulated and you call for a stop. For the first time, you end up crouching on the ground trying to regulate your out-of-whack breathing. Your cousin says we could turn back and you look at him in horror – ‘turn back! We aren’t even halfway there!’. Two factors to this – climbing up seems to have been hard on you since you caught covid, your fitness at an all time low and that’s saying something given you aren’t very fit to begin with. The 2nd factor – the steep incline on a very jaunty speed, such a rookie mistake.
You eventually catch your breath and the incline tapers. You enjoy the rest on a relatively easier trek. Such is the trail to Fairy Cove – difficulty goes from hard to easy.
As you go up higher into the hills, you the ground starts turning rocky, the plants more desert-like. You see some dried out, some lush and green, some remnants after a bush fire. In some spots you think the fire to be a controlled one to prevent further spreads for it seemed to clinical the burns.
You come across the beautiful view of the coast when you climb high enough and you are greeted by boulders with facial features, they remind you of easter island. Some plants you recognise from you educational trip to Gardens by the Bay, others you don’t.
Eventually the trail splits and a marker points right for Fairy Cove – you hear the laughter of children by the bay and you think, we must be near. The marker says 1km to Fairy Cove. You look at your Fitbit, you have already covered more than 3km…What a lie those markers have!!!! You swear the markers meant perpendicular distance, the shortest and impossible route to Fairy Cove…
Your aim however is the tip of the cliff, and so you soldier on with your two walking buddies. It plateaus a little and so the walk is easier, you chit-chat, drink and, greet other walkers. In this semi-zoned out state, you cousin suddenly exclaims and raises his hand out to stop you.
Upfront, slithers a pretty decent sized brown snake. It heads towards you in smooth wave-like motion. FYI brown snakes are poisonous. You keep calm, back off and turn back. The trip to the tip to catch amazing views culled by a very lively brown snake, your first true animal sighting on this trek. Do you have pictures? Hell no! you believe in Keep Calm and Move on not Keep Ridiculously Calm and Take Pictures.
On your way back you see more people. You kindly warn them of the brown snake and move on. The groups you see are true to Australia’s eclecticism. Some in hiking gear, others showing off their amazing abs in gym clothes, and more uniquely two in slippers, shorts, tank tops and drinking beer.
You eventually reach the crazy incline portion (going down is always easier) and you happily knock into the very same tree you hit on the way up. Worse part, both times you ducked your head, both times you didn’t duck low enough…Such an embarrassing scene is capture by a group heading up. They are panting, sweating and looking ready to call it quits, so lucky for you they did not care to note of your ‘knock into tree’ moment. Instead, a girl asks you while panting, how much further is it.
You: mmm, *looks at Fitbit distance counter* it’s about 7km more, to and fro from here.
She: 7km!!! *looks ahead and despairs*
You: it gets better once you get past this point, all the best with your walk!
Later, you laugh with your cousin and ask, ‘do you think she will make it to Fairy Cove?’.
Trek no. 2: Hello IG worthy View
You move on to a famous viewpoint – Mount Oberon. For you Mt. Oberon is a fun name, it reminds you of the game Avalon and the ‘Oberon’ amongst your friends. Indeed Oberon is deceptive without knowing it. A 4km walk (accurate this time), it brings you on a constant but doable incline upwards. That it is till the last 0.5km or so. You been going on a constant spiral motion upwards when suddenly the trees give way to an open space up top. Then you look up. Yes, there are now stairs to get to the ‘top-top’.
Is it hard? Not exactly, most can do it. You dare say, even your parents getting on their years could, if they took it slow. Just maybe not those with difficulty walking, which makes you wonder with the way the trails are done at Wilson Prom, who will ever use the ‘wheelchair friendly’ parking lots?
Unfortunately, the trio of healthy of a young enough age, trekked upwards with heavy legs. As easy as described, it really isn’t a walk in the park after doing 7km of tough trekking. To the aches are coming at you as you plod on.
The view, before the top is nothing amazing. Boring to be the best descriptor. It reminds you of running around the track, the only thing keeping it fun is the conversations between the three. For example, talking about a lost hat being Ed Sheeren’s lol.
You eventually make it to the top, and all of a sudden it goes from warm to COLD. The gust of winds so strong, your hat floats up and thankfully you catch it before it floats away…
Trek no. 3: Hello kangaroos! Wallabies! Animals! Eh no hello bushland…
Finally, you stop at a place known for animal sightings. Your cousin came up before and said they were everywhere! Except they weren’t. You go off the beaten path, walk right through bushes. But all you see is the vast plains of bushland and dried animal droppings. Clearly, the past few days of near 40C heat had scared them into hiding or killed them as your cousin morbidly guesses. You choose to believe in the former, just hiding from PLAIN sight. Cos its FLAT and practically bare. Where could they hide? So animal sighting (ignoring the crows) – 1 Brown Snake. Animal count – pathetic. Animal sighting excitement – heart racing 150bpm inducing brown snake. Worth it? Of course!
Trek no. 4: the last bits that gave you the nice total of 20km
It is called walk back to the car and have your cousin drive 3+ hours back home. By the time you return from the daytrip, the summer sun had well-set and its hitting 9.30pm. You do a quick wash-up and head to bed. That night, you slept well.