Wilsons Promontory

Wilsons Promontory is three hours from Melbourne by car, and the last thirty kilometres are on a single road that tells you something about what you’re approaching: nowhere else to go, no other reason to be on this road. The Prom, as everyone calls it, is a granite peninsula jutting into the Bass Strait, covered in dense eucalyptus and coastal heath, surrounded by beaches that look implausible and are real.

Arriving and Tidal River

The main settlement is Tidal River, a park campground and visitor centre where the Tidal River meets the beach. It holds no shops to speak of, no mobile signal worth relying on, and a campground that books out months ahead for any long weekend between October and April. I arrived on a weekday in March and had space enough.

The river meets the beach in a way that creates a lagoon at low tide, warm and shallow, perfect for children who are happy splashing for four hours in knee-deep water while parents read paperbacks in camp chairs. I am not a child but I went in anyway. The water was warm and the sand underfoot was fine-grained and white and squeaked.

Squeaky Beach

The beach is called Squeaky Beach because the sand squeaks under your feet, a phenomenon caused by the particularly rounded uniformity of the quartz grains, and once you’ve heard it you cannot un-hear it. I walked the length of it twice, slightly unhinged by the sound. The beach is backed by granite boulders in the rounded shapes you see in certain Tasmanian bays and in photos from beaches I’ve always associated with Scandinavia — great smooth spheres stacked as if placed deliberately.

The water offshore was the kind of blue that requires an absence of runoff and a certain angle of southern light to produce, and it had both.

The Walk to South Point

The walk to South Point — the southernmost point of mainland Australia — is about nineteen kilometres each way, an overnight hike with a campsite at Roaring Meg and another at South Point itself. I did it over two days, starting before six in the morning when the light was low and orange and the wombats hadn’t yet retreated from the track. Three wombats. Moving slowly, shaped like something designed by someone who had heard of aerodynamics but was not interested in applying it.

The track passes through coastal heath, then forest, then granite headlands with the strait visible on three sides. At South Point the lighthouse is white against a sky that had cleared overnight and the wind was from the southwest, which means from the Southern Ocean, which means from nowhere. The next land mass in that direction is Antarctica.

I stood there for a while considering this. Then I ate my packed lunch and walked back.

Wildlife

The Prom is among the best places in Victoria for wildlife that has not been curated for viewing. Wombats cross the roads at Tidal River from dusk onwards with a confidence that suggests they have reached an understanding with the park management. Emus stand on the beach and stare at you. Wallabies appear at the edge of the campground in the morning and eat the grass around the tent pegs without apparent concern.

The wildlife here has learned that humans are not dangerous and have not yet learned that this should surprise them. Interacting with them — or rather, not interacting and simply existing in the same space — is one of the better experiences the Prom offers.

When to go: Spring (September–November) for wildflowers and mild temperatures. Autumn (March–May) for warm water and emptier campgrounds after school holidays. Avoid summer long weekends unless you book months in advance. Winter is cold and windy but beautiful, and the park is nearly empty.