Wilsons Prom - Tidal River Campground

Welcome back! In this one we head down to Wilsons Prom for a weekend of camping at Tidal River. We explore the beautiful river area around the campsite, enjoy Squeaky Beach and get attacked by wombats... To see any places mentioned be sure to find us on Youtube at Shire Travels and instagram shire.travels. Until next time!

Transcript

Welcome back to Shire Travels in this one, we're heading down to Wilson's prom, which is around 3 1/2 hours from Melbourne. This is a very popular tourist destination in Victoria and one that Tom and I have been to on three occasions. On the last two occasions, we did the overnight hike down to Sealer's Cove and Refuge Cove. This is an amazing overnightnight hike, one of the best beginner hikes I'd say that you can do in Victoria. Unfortunately, when we were down there this time, we saw that that track is now closed. It looks like there was damage to the track, maybe from flooding or a landslide. Hopefully, they do fix up soon and it doesn't become an excuse to maybe close it and not maintain the track. Because as I said, it is one of the most amazing overnight hikes you camp right near the beach, and it's a very easy one for beginners. On this occasion, though, we went down there with the kids and the caravan, and we were staying for three nights in tidal River Camp.ground. We were fortunate enough to book this during the Victorian government free camping scheme, and we were also one of the few people who managed to make a booking and decided to use the booking. If you know, you know, you might have seen on YouTube or social media that a lot of people made bookings and then didn't actually show up. The campgrounds were showing as fully booked, but there was hardly anyone there. Now, for us, when we drove in, yes, there were signs everywhere saying it was fully booked. We went in and we saw that there were probably about 60% of the sites that were full. Apart from that, it was empty. A lot of the sites around us were vacant the whole time that we were there. Really disappointing to see. It means that there were plenty of people that were missing out on being down there for the weekend. In saying that, though, I do give some people a slight benefit of the doubt. We had a number of bookings made during this free camping time, two of which we ended up cancelling, and it was actually a lot more difficult to cancel than what I first thought. A couple of the bookings, I thought, yep, it's all done. Then I kept getting reminders that our weekend of camping was coming up. Turns out there's several steps that you have to do. It's quite over the top to actually cancel the booking. So maybe people were like me. thought it was cancelled and actually it wasn't. Anyway, let's get on the road. We left after work and headed down there, getting in quite late at night. And when you get down to Wilson's prom, there is a parks, Victoria, I guess kind of booth as you drive in. I guess during the day this is operational. If a campground isn't fully booked, and you turn up and want to make a booking, I guess this is where you would do it. Now, a couple of times that we've been down there, I've always thought, right, this is not too far fromidal River. We'll be there quite soon. It's actually a good 20, 30 minutes before you actually get down to Tidal River. So it can be a little bit deceptive. Now, the drive down there that lasts 20, 30 minutes was just anxiety overload. There were so many wallabies and kangaroos hanging out on the side of the road. Literally every five, 10 metres, there was one of them sat there. We slowed down, took it as slow as we possibly could, but they just sat there. They didn't move, fortunately, and none of them jumped out into the road in front of us. But it did make for quite a tense last section of the drive. Aside from that, the drive down, to be honest, was fairly boring. We'd stayed down there in February and it was extremely busy. At the time when I made the booking, there were about a handful of campsites that were still available. Because of this, I ended up just booking what I thought would be best. Prior to doing our overnight hikes, we had just stayed in the top section, which is kind of near the visitor centre. That was quite a few years ago, so I think the layout has changed since then, but we had never stayed in the actual large unpowered section of the campground before. We ended up staying on 6th Avenue, and we were quite near the tidal block block of toilets. Now, I chose this spot because the campsite I could see was about seven metres by 11 metres. This meant that we'd be able to fit our six metre caravan in very easily and that we'd also have space next to us to park the car and roll out the o oil.ning. The other good thing about this campsite was that it backed onto Tidal River. and it was maybe a five minute walk down, but it was much closer to the tidal River running through rather than the beach area. Now, I did remember last time that we were here, the beaches were really rough. They're not exactly the most family friendly swimable spots. And I knew that we would probably end up spending most of our time at Tidal River and ended up being a really good spot. The only thing I will know is that, fortunately for us, the site opposite us was unoccupied, even though it was meant to be fully booked, which meant that we could drive forward, as far as we needed to and then simply reverse back. If someone had been in that spot, it probably would have been a little bit squishy, but our caravan's quite small and so we managed to make it work. Now, we got into camp, probably about nine o'clock. We had already had dinner on the way. We stopped, I think, at Foster, just at a random place to have some dinner. So when we pulled up to camp, popped the top, put the legs down, and put the kids into bed, and that was pretty much our night. Now, we'll quickly mention as well, there are over 400 campsites in the Tidal River campground. It basically is a caravan park, that is a powered section where you're tucked in quite close to everyone. And actually, even the unpowered section, you are pretty tight together, but there's plenty of trees and shrubs around that kind of offer a bit of privacy. As I said, we were there during the government's free camping scheme. Normally, it's around $33 a night, and this is actually the price currently, even though there is the Victorian government's half price camping scheme, I couldn't quite imagine spending $666 a night here. Don't get me wrong. It's beautiful. It's somewhere we plan to come back to. But for $66 a night, you do expect maybe a little bit more for your money, especially in terms of, I guess, the track maintenance, site maintenance, all around the campground, a lot of the signs and just the fences and things had graffitiffiti scratched into them. The sites were pretty unlevel. The bridge that crosses over Tidal River as well was closed because it needed engineering work. As I mentioned at the start, the hiked down to Refuge Cove, that tracks closed because there's been damage to the track. And so it's kind of hard to see where all that money is going. And as I said, over 400 campsites, this place is booked out during pretty much all of summer. $66 a night normally. You just think that they would maybe reinvest that money back into the campground, fixing up a little bit, making it look a little bit nicer. Anyway, on our first morning there, we decided to do the Luern Boardwalk. Very easy, pramfriendly, family friendly loop that goes on a boardwalk, as you might have guessed, down by Tidal River and then we ended up walking down to the beach as well. And as I mentioned, we walked down to the bridge that crosses over tiidal River. Unfortunately, it was closed off. Still a really nice spot there to get some pictures. The river is beautiful. It's very clear, shallow, calm water. There was a group of people having a stand-up paddleboard lesson and even some young kids going for a swim. Now, the weather during our time there was just a bit of everything, sunny, windy, rainy, cloudy. We really had it all. Once we had done a bit of the boardwalk, we walked down to the beach. Now, the beach area, the section where you can camp close to it is ideal if you are bringing a boat with you because there's boat ramps there that you can launch into the water. We had a quick walk down on the beach. It was incredibly windy. There were a group of people there having a surf lesson, and then we decided to head back to the caravan to have a bit of morning tea. And that was when we got our first glimpse of all the wildlife that's in the tidal River campground and there is wildlife in abundance. All different sorts of birds, wallabies, kangaroos, wombats, possums, they are all extremely friendly because people feed them. You can expect expect them to be getting up close and personal with you, whether you like it or not. We had quite a few encounters with the wombats, which I'll tell you about a bit later. Now, Tidal River campground has a general store, a cafe. There's a place where you can book tours if you want to go out on a boat. There's also the Parks Victoria office where you can sign in if you're going to do a walk. And as well as campsites, they also have cabins as well, and I think they have areas for school bookings, too. So it's a huge site. It's quite a big operation down there. There are heaps of different walks you can down there. If walks is something that you're into, Wilson's Prom, is the place for you. This time going with the two little kids, we really didn't try and do any apart from a couple of boardwalks and the walk down to Squeaky Beach. We half considered doing the walk up to Mount Oberon. Tom and I had done this previously, and we witnessed what was the best sunset we have ever seen in our lives. It was absolutely incredible. Now, the walk isn't too difficult. You're pretty much just following a vehicle access track, which serpentines up the mountain. Now, we consider this for all of 10 minutes, thinking thinking that, oh, it's only a couple of kilometres, wasn't it? No, it's actually a six kilometre return walk. And as I said, not too difficult, but it is just uphill the entire way. Now, with the youngest, that's not too difficult difficult. Just chuck them in the betpck carrier, but with the four-year-old, I just didn't think that we would have enough snacks slashbribes in the world to be able to get her to walk at three kilometres up a mountain. Now, once we had had a bit of lunch, we decided to head down to Tidal River itself, put the swimmers on the kids and just turf them into the water so they could burn off a bit of energy. It wasn't actually too cold at that time of year and they had fun just splashing around in the shallow water. There's also heaps of, I think there's soldier crabs and they are absolutely everywhere. We were digging holes, digging them up, and then watching them very quickly, but bury themselves back down again was lots of fun for the kids. As I mentioned before, the water there is beautifully clear. It's shallow. There are a few spots where there's bigger boulders than deeper water you can jump into if you want to, but it's a huge area. There's plenty of room to spread out. Even if the campsite was fully booked and everyone was there for their bookings, there would still be lots of room to spread yourself out and find a spa all to yourself. That afternoon, we just hung around at the caravan looking at all the different wildlife and then enjoyed an early dinner and it was time to put the the kids to bed. Now, Tom had put the oldest to bed and was outside and I could hear quite a commotion going on. When I came out later, once the youngest had fallen asleep, it turned out that a wombat had got itself into our bin, which was fairly secure. And when I say got itself into our bin, I mean, it had physically burrowed itself into the entire bin. Tom thought that when he went out there and we kind of stood there, shooed it, it would get scared and run off, oh, no, this thing was not budging for anything. He ended up having to take his flip-flop off and give it a little nudge. Even then, it was very reluctant to move. Tom pretty much had to wrestle the bin off it. It was very funny, and all night throughout the campsite, we could just hear people having battles with wombats. I felt quite sorry for people who were staying intents because these wombats were just hell bent on getting whatever food they wanted. They did not care about people at all. Next day, we woke up. The weather wasn't looking too great, but we decided to head down to Squeaky Beach. This is only a five or ten minute drive from Tidal River campground, and it gets its name because when you scuff your feet on the sand, it squeaks because the sand, the silica is so pure, it squeaks together, hence the name. The walk down to it from the car park was very easy, maybe only five, 10 minutes, and the beach itself is great, maybe not the best beach for swimming, like a lot of the beaches around there, but there are huge boulders on the beach and there's lots of little passageways between them, so you can kind of run around, play hide and seek, a really nice spot to spend a morning or afternoon. The only annoying thing was there was a family on the beach who decided it was the perfect spot to fly their drone around really low over everyone. All the families and children enjoy the beach. Now, Wilson's prom is in national park. It's a no drone zone. Now I own a drone. I love flying it. I always get a little bit annoyed that I can't do it because, yes, you can get some really beautiful spots in places. But to be honest, I respect it and I know that it's incredibly annoying the sound and flying them around and it's quite invasive. And yeah, as a person flew around the beach, really low over people. You could hear people commenting about how, you know, invasive, rude it was. So don't be that person. Back at camp, the sun was shining. We decided to do a little walk up to the general store and purchase a few ice creams. And then we just looped around the Luern boardwalk again, really nice in the sun, Such a beautiful walk. It's also a really good spot for fishing down there. We passed plenty of pontoons where there were families out fishing. I mean, I'm not going to lie, I have no idea if it actually is a good fishing spot in terms of actually catching fish, but it's an idyllic spot to just sit and cast a line in. After our ice creams were consumed, we decided to head back down to Tidal River and have a bit more of a splash in the water. It really is a beautiful spot.. There's a beautiful hills or mountains in the background, the huge boulders, the lovely, clear water. It is a very special spot. And I can see why it is so popular, especially with young families. Now, tidal River flows down to the beach, which is close by, and at the end of the day, I think it must have been around four, five o'clock, they bring in a couple of huge boats that go out and do trips all around the national park. And to bring them in, they have wheels on the bottom and they drive them up the beach. It's quite funny and interesting to see. Once the kids were sufficiently worn out back to the caravan, had some dinner and put them to bed. Now, I was sad outside whilst Tom was putting the kids to bed and a wombat came past and it hung out and I was like, this is great, got some nice pictures of it. Oh, wow, look at it. It's so cute and it's so close. Next thing you know, it comes over, climbs up onto our camp chair to try and get into the high chair that we've got there. Obviously, there were some food scraps. I went and got into a bit of a panic because they've got very sharp claws and teeth. I was worried it was going to damage the chair. So I walked over to it again and thinking that that would probably just scare it off. Oh, no. I pretty much had to shove it away. The thing just did not care, was not interested in the fact that I was there. It just wanted to find some food. It hung around camp, just running around everywhere. Then another one appeared, which looked pretty mangy. If you look at our footage on YouTube, you'll know what I mean. It had lost a lot of hair. It was scratching its bum on the water tank for ages and again, looking for food. And then what was quite funny was the possums that they've got down there, I'm not quite sure of the specific type, but they're really big compared to the ones that you get, say, in Melbourne City. And them and the wombats basically fight. It's every animal for themselves trying to find a few scraps of food. The racket that they were making, we couldn't quite believe it. Safe to say it providedided a good amount of entertainment, just sitting there and watch all this different wildlife running through the camp. Now, while that was quite entertaining, I did decide to walk down to Titidal River in the evening to get a few nice pictures of the stars and the river. It really is a very photogenic, beautiful spot. The next morning, really wasn't much to write home about. We just packed up and headed back to Melbourne Now, pack up with the caravan is just so easy. It really has been. I hate to use the phrase game changer, but it has been just with the two kids. It makes life so much easier to just focus use things away, press a button and the roof goes down, hitch up, and we're gone. And once again, the drive back to Melbourne was nothing eventful, which I guess is probably a good thing. So tide River campground would recommend it. Absolutely, we would. Look, maybe if we were there in the middle of summer when it is absolutely fully booked out, it might be a little bit of a different vibe. But as I said, the tidal River section, at the beach, they're so big that there's plenty of room to find your own spot, there's also fantastic walks to do down there, plenty of ones that we all try and do when the kids are a little bit older. It's also the type of place that is beautiful, no matter what the season. Yes, it would be cold in winter, but it would be much quieter and the hikes would still be just as beautiful. Now, if you'd like to see any footage of this trip or any of the other trips that we've done, you can find us on YouTube. Just search for Shire Travels. You can also find us on Instagram as well, Shire.travels. See you in the next one.