WARBY - OVENS NATIONAL PARK

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Forest Camp Walk [AWTGS-3]

Access to this walk, known locally as the ‘Springtime Wildflower Walk’, is by taking the Boweya Road turn-off from the Wangaratta-Yarrawonga Road, and then swinging right onto an unsignposted slip road about 5.8km from the Yarrawonga Road.

This leads, after about 100m, to a signpost on the right saying ‘Camp Road’, and Warby-Ovens National Park.

Turning into Camp Road, it is a great run through open woodland, an ecosystem created by the dry conditions of the north-facing range country here. Ignoring all of the minor roads and tracks leading off Camp Road, it is an easy 2.5km to ’The Camp’ (also known as Forest Camp) where there is some excellent camping infrastructure.

The Camp is a popular area, particularly with bird watchers, and given its great ambience, this is a nice place to spend a night or two.

During the Great Depression (early 1930s) this area was home to otherwise unemployed men to harvest the local timber, the firewood being shipped out via the railway station at nearby Peechelba.

During World War II, the area was used as an internment camp for ‘aliens’ (mostly Italians), and again, the main occupation was gathering timber.

The walk described here is signposted off to the left, just prior to The Camp (that is, south of the camping/day visitor area) and the signage indicates that this is a 3.7km walk.

Overall, the walk is graded as AWTGS-2, but given a few quirks in the terrain, AWTGS-3 is more appropriate.

Slipping past the signpost, the track, which is mostly single-file, meanders through some beautiful open forest of ironbark, and is defined by the occasional red arrow.

Follow this route through to a bush road, where you need to swing left, and then follow this roadway through to a sweeping bend, where you need to follow the arrows to the right.

Look out for more red arrows along here, and swing right once more to the site of a former logging camp, and then diagonally off to the left to a pedestrian bridge over a picturesque creek.

Having crossed the creek, pick out the faint footpad leading upslope, and to the right of here.

This leads up and down for a while, crosses another bush track, and eventually arrives at a small t-junction where you need to keep straight-ahead.

This now leads to a roadway, where a left turn is required, and from here, follow this roadway through to The Camp.

[Ironbark is an impressive timber, an amazingly thick bark, with beautifully durable (and heavy) timber beneath this; Australian bush poet A B (Banjo) Patterson famously wrote about ‘The Man from Ironbark’.]

COPYRIGHT © 1995-2020, Chris McLaughlin.