Hiking the Great South West Walk in Australia

January 2025

Cities don’t really interest us (anymore), so we limited the time in Melbourne to the minimum to get over jet lag, meet some people, and get at least a glimpse of what the city is about. We wanted to get out to the start of the Great South West Walk as soon as possible. Spending as much time in nature, with only our backpacks and out hiking, is our primary objective. Australia is not necessarily the first destination that comes to mind for multi-day and long-distance trails. However, the most prominent hike is probably the 900-km-long Bibbulmun Trail in Western Australia; other hikes are the Larapinta Trail or the Heysen Trail. All these trails have in common is that summer is not the best time to hike. Temperatures are too high, and water is scarce. However, a few trails of medium length at the coast are comfortable to hike in summer, as they are either in close vicinity or along the coast. Also, these trails are of medium length and therefore are doable in just the couple of weeks we had in January in Australia.
So we decided to hike the 265-km-long Great South West Walk. This is a loop in the south-west of Victoria. It was established as a trail in 1981 by two lively residents of Portland. Later, in 1984, a volunteer group known as the “Friends of the Great South West Walk Inc.” continued to extend, realign, maintain, upgrade, and promote the GSWW on behalf of the Glenelg Shire community and in collaboration with Parks Victoria.
The trail is promoted as a ‚trail symphony divided into four different parts‘: The first section is through the Cobbobonnee Forest, the second section along the Glenelg River in the namesake National Park, the third section along the beach, and the fourth and last section along the impressive cliffs of the so-called ship-wrecked-coast, where many ships sank. You can start the trail wherever you want. Still, Portland is the most logical location to do so as it is connected to public transportation from Melbourne, has supermarkets and accommodations, and the little information center also serves somewhat as the official office for the GSWW. When starting in Portland, the little town of Nelson is conveniently located halfway along the trail. We therefore decided to zero there and also resupply. We did not expect much from the GSWW: this would be my partner’s first hike in Australia, we wanted to spend some time together, and maybe, if we were fortunate, we would see a koala.
Other than that, planning the hike was limited to getting the guidebook and booking the camp sites along the walk. Only a couple of weeks before we headed to Australia, we looked into booking the campsites on the official website of Parks Victoria. We did not expect the sites to be busy as the walk is unknown beyond the region. The sites were not busy, but they didn’t cost anything for whatever reason. It must be a glitch in the park’s booking system! We contacted the admin of the camping sites and quickly got the reply that all camping sites in Victoria this summer are free of charge to encourage people to use them. This was the first surprise! As camping is limited to the designated campsites, booking all the camp sites sets the plan for the hike. We’d use all sites and therefore have relatively short 15-20 km days. We considered skipping sites, but wanted to take it slow and spend a lot of time on the trail. All camp sites have a three-walled shelter, at least one rainwater tank, sites to pitch a tent, and a privy.
Furthermore, we educated ourselves on the different species of snakes in this area and how to avoid being bitten.

So, we left Melbourne by local train on the morning of January 2, changed to a local bus in Warnambool, and arrived in Portland five hours after departing Melbourne. In Portland, we took care of our first supply, looked around a bit, and got into the mindset of setting out on another longish hike the next day.

We were pretty excited to start the trail for many reasons: it was Johns first trail in Australia, we were hoping to be maybe lucky enough to see a koala, but first and foremost we were actually a little intimidated by the fact that Victoria is home to several of the most venomous snakes such as Tiger Snake, Copperhead and Eastern Brown. Also, starting to hike a new trail (in a foreign country) is always somewhat an adventure: you do not really know what to expect, you do not have a good feeling for the trail yet, you only have an idea about the upcoming days and you are ready to forget all about a plan you made and adjust to the new circumstances. In all these years of hiking long trails, I learned that even though I might be an experienced hiker, I am only experienced on a specific trail in one particular year. Every trail is different, and it is different every time you hike because the weather is different. You might even be a different person with different abilities, expectations, and goals.

So, off we went, towards the Cobbobonnee Forest. We stopped for our lunch break to sit down under an eucalyptus tree next to the road. Because I was paranoid about snakes, I thoroughly searched the ground. I didn’t find a snake, but I noticed small brown beads … and then John pointed towards the tree branches above us: a small koala was blinking wearily into the sun. The beads are koala poop. Immediately, our midday sluggishness was blown away by the koala sighting, and we were in awe to see a koala on our first day of hiking. We could not stop looking up and watching this little guy hanging out in a fork of tree branches. Eventually, we kept hiking, not knowing this was the first of many more koala sightings. But it was not only these cute animals we saw; soon we started to see tiger snakes and copperheads, either directly sitting on the trail, slithering away from the trail, or curled up in the underbrush left and right from where we walked. Even though the trail itself is not difficult, as there are no significant ascents and descents, and the trail is nicely maintained and not rugged at all, it was exhausting to watch my step on the trail as I constantly tried to tell a stick from a snake. The snakes around this area are fortunately docile and mind their own business, but you don’t want to step on them and provoke them to bite. However, it almost happened once: John stepped over a tiger snake sitting in the middle of the trail without seeing it.
I practically also oversaw it, but touched it with the tip of my shoe. I screamed, jumped as high and far as possible, and ran down the trail to distance myself from the snake. After a few seconds, I started panicking and realised what almost could have happened. Despite constantly scanning the trail, there was so much more going on around us: koalas in the trees, emus running from us after we unintentionally scared them off, echidnas hiding their noses in the ground, seals sun-bathing along the cliffs, of course countless kangaroos and wallabies, and an unbelievable abundance of colourful birds screeching above us in the tree’s canopy. Parrots such as Cockatoos, Yellow-tailed Cockatoos, were constant companions along the trail in the forest. Along the coast, we saw gannet colonies. We could hardly believe our luck in experiencing all these fascinating species on our hike.
We finished every day at a designated campsite with a shelter, rainwater tank, and privy. Sometimes we arrived in the early afternoon, which gave us a lot of time to relax, read, write, and cool off, as hiking under the Australian sun is surprisingly intense and tiring. We had the campsites to ourselves most of the time, making the trail feel remote and wild. We met another couple who did a paddle-hike-combination only near Portland, along the Glenelg River.
Approaching Portland, the trail crossed into South Australia for 4 kilometres, which also meant we had to adjust our watches to the 30-minute time difference between these two states.

The trail’s four unique environments exceeded our expectations by far. The forest and river sections were spectacular as we walked among giant eucalyptus trees on red earth, and were accompanied by much wildlife. The sections along the coast and on the clifftops were characterised by miles and miles of empty beaches, views over a roaring southern ocean, stories of plenty of ship wrecks, and overall the striking colors of blue skies, turquoise waters, white beaches, and green, lush coastal vegetation.

I liked that wherever we went and talked to people, everyone seemed to have a close connection to the trail: either because they were out on a walking/cycling/kayaking trip on the GSWW as school students, or they did maintenance along the trail. It is impressive to learn about the power a trail can have: it connects communities, creates responsibilities and pride about where you live, and starts to educate young generations about the environment and its vulnerability.

It took us 13 days to hike the Great South West Walk, and this trail is easily one of the most exciting and beautiful medium-length trails I have ever hiked! The reason is probably a combination of not having intensively looked into the trail itself (and therefore didn’t know what to expect landscape-wise; being surprised by the beauty of a landscape without having spoiled it before), the abundance of animals we saw, the total solitude, and the spectacular Australian landscapes we experienced.