Desert Discovery Walk, Little Desert National Park, Victoria

Salt Lake

I stumbled upon this hike by accident when searching for new hiking possibilities and it proved to be a great find. It is quite amazing that there should be an area of scrubby desert like this only four hours' drive from Melbourne; it is totally another world even from the country town of Dimboola only ten kilometres away. And even more odd that the desert national park is flanked by a reasonable sized river, the Wimmera. What I’m saying is that there's no impression of travelling through an arid region on the approach to the park, yet the entire hike is on sand and you have to hope there is water in the tanks.

The night before starting my hike I camped near the river at a designated campsite. There were lots of kangaroos hopping around. It rained in the night so I had to pack away a wet tent. I parked my car at the trailhead and set out along the river bank. It was really pretty with the early morning yellowish glow and some nice red gums. 

Wimmera River

Soon I moved off the 4WD road onto a walking track, very sandy although luckily for me the rain had damped the sand down and made the going easier. The main problem with the walking tracks here is that they are used by trail bikes and get really roughed up; I saw tyre marks along my entire hike but never saw any bikes. The trail went through an area of lowland scrub with lots of grass trees and banksias and dotted with mallee. Part way through the morning I had a few drops of rain but there was no rain on the forecast so it promptly stopped. I kept going right until I got to my first campsite, called Yellowgums, which was a big sandy clearing among the yellow gums with a couple of benches, a water tank and a pit toilet. I’d done 20 km and it was only 2pm but I decided I liked the luxury of a few facilities. I felt confident I was going to be alone there. As soon as it got to late afternoon the air turned cold and it was dark before 6pm.

The second day I continued on towards Kiata campsite. An early highlight was Salt Lake, a smallish round lake fringed by trees and a narrow strip of white sand. I detoured off the trail to walk at the lake's edge and it was really slippery so the white stuff may have been salt rather than sand. The trail climbed gradually to a trig point - I stopped here for a snack and nearly missed the viewing area because it was tucked into the bush behind where I stopped, but there was a great expansive view of the park and looking towards isolated Mount Arapiles in the distance, plus a few small lakes and a lot of wind turbines.

Beyond here the trail went into a tunnel of broom trees. At ground level were lots of tiny white flowering bushes. I came to a junction and went the wrong way at first, which was a blessing in disguise because I saw a mallee fowl standing on the path, the wrong path, ahead of me. They are notoriously shy and it quickly walked away. Kiata campsite was very large and in a grassy forest. There were several groups of car campers and the most toilet blocks I’ve ever seen at a campsite. I got here rather early too after hiking 22 kms.

On my third day the vegetation was much more varied as I moved between groves of broom trees and tall heath melaleuca to open heathland with banksias to what could almost be called forest. Today’s highlight was seeing one emu and then a pair of emus running across the trail. I also frequently heard the thump of startled kangaroos jumping up and running through the bush. I passed a few small dams, all with yucky brown water, and came to the Mallee campsite where I had intended to stay. It was quite pretty, next to one such dam, but it was only 12.30 so I had lunch and decided to continue and camp out randomly that night. 

The last section of the trail was really pretty. It undulated a fair bit so I had a lot of vistas over large areas of the park and there were even a few low hills to go up and over. The morning had been cool and overcast but in the afternoon the sun came out properly and the sky became fully blue. I wouldn’t quite say it was hot but there was a warmish tinge to the air. I could see a line of trees on the horizon for ages which I reckoned must be on the bank of the Wimmera River, my destination. This final section was 13 kms and I soon realised I would have no problem completing the hike before dark, so I ignored a couple of nice camping possibilities in light forest and walked back to my car. This made the day 32 kms and the full hike was 74 kms.

Mallee

I had a bit of a saga that night. It was Saturday and both sections of the campsite by the river where I had camped before my hike had a group of noisy campers. I found a secluded spot in one half of the camping area and put up my tent, ate dinner and went to bed. I lay in bed listening to the noisy campers first just playing loud music and yelling, and then racing their utes along the dirt road, and I became increasingly alarmed that they may crash into my car which I had not been able to park very far from the road. So at 9.30pm I packed up my tent and drove to the other half of the campsite, about a kilometre away, and set everything up again; it was still noisy even here but no car races, although I could still hear the racing happening in the area where I had been when I woke up in the night. That night was absolutely freezing; the next morning at 8am it was minus two degrees as I drove away from Dimboola, an atmospheric mist over the river and there was a thick frost.