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MOUNT BEAUTY WALKS

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Mountain Creek Walks

These walks starts at the local gateway to the Alpine National Park, at the Mountain Creek Picnic/Camping Area. Access is from Mountain Creek Lane, which leads off the Kiewa Valley Highway, adjacent to the former Bogong View Hotel in Tawonga South.

Once at the Picnic/Camping Area there is ample parking space for vehicles, except in peak periods. loading...

There are three distinct walks on offer here, however, it is worthwhile completing them all in the one session, as they link up together very neatly. The individual walks are Shady Gully (15 minutes, AWTGS-2); Tree Fern (60 minutes, AWTGS-2); Black Cockatoo (90 minutes, AWTGS-3) and the Peppermint Walk (90 minutes, AWTGS-3). If you do all of these walks in the one linked session, then you will need about 90 minutes all up.

Whichever walk, or walk combination, you tackle it is highly likely that you will encounter wet terrain, and a good pair of walking shoes (or boots) will be a good investment.

The combined walk starts off by following the Shady Gully signage from the information board at the entrance to the car park. This follows Mountain Creek for a short distance, crosses the creek and returns towards the camping area.

Continue upstream from here (signposted Tree Fern Walk), and basically follow Mountain Creek upstream to a t-junction. Veer left here (the right fork heads down to the Creek and is a continuation of the Tree Fern Walk; the left fork leads to the Black Cockatoo Walk).

This brings you out to a small bridge over Mountain Creek, and from the other side of the water, you need to swing right onto the narrow vehicular track (the main pedestrian access to Mount Bogong) and lookout for the signposted left turn onto the Peppermint Walk.

Whilst the outward journey followed Mountain Creek quite closely, with the track clinging to south-facing slopes where the soil and vegetation are protected from drying northerly winds and direct sunlight, the return trip follows a fairly exposed north-facing slope where direct sunlight and northerly winds reduce the moisture content of the soil to a minimum. This produces areas of open forest with native grasses being almost the only kind of ground cover, a dramatic contrast to the earlier part of the walk.