Great Ocean Walk - Day 6

Day 6 Ryan’s Den – Devils Kitchen

The view from Devils Kitchen Campsite to Wreck Beach

Day 6 included the highly anticipated walk along Wreck Beach. Again all the information provided by Park’s Vic certainly made you think twice about doing it though.  The day started as day 5 finished off, with lots of steep up and downs, which was hard and tiring. There were plenty of lovely viewpoints though. We knew though that once we got to the beach that was pretty much it for the day, we also wanted to make sure we got there at low tide. It was along here as the sun started to get hot, that we saw the largest and most aggressive Tiger Snake of the trip. This one was sat in the path, and didn’t look like it was in any hurry to move, after giving us the stare and a few flicks of the tongue, it decided to move off. And I was really glad that it did as for a moment it did look like it was going to come right at us! After a couple of hours we made it to the new alignment of the track that was lovely gently undulating paths through rainforest. This made a nice change from the narrow, steep paths from the cliff faces. 

At the bottom of the 366 steps

We then made our way up to the Gables lookout, which was a little disappointing to be honest as you cannot see wreck beach from here. We took the opportunity to take our shoes off here, knowing that there were 366 steps down to the beach coming up! 

The steps down to wreck beach weren’t that bad in the end and Wreck Beach was lovely. We strolled along the beach before sitting down to lunch at the far end of the beach! Again to be molested by Sand Flies! The water however was lovely on my hot tired feet! From our lunch spot we could see the campsite high above the beach! We could see what we thought was the shelter, so decided to head up to the site. 

The view from the Dunny!

Having a rest, the Dunny can be seen on the ridgeline almost in the middle.

The path from the beach to the site was a bit longer than expected, this seemed to becoming a usual feature of the walk! It was also quite steep! After about 40minutes we made it to the campsite, to find the building we saw from the beach was the toilet not the shelter. The shelter was in the shade down the valley a short distance from the toilet. The pitches were again lovely, with one even being with a beach view and its own personal viewpoint! We spent a couple of ours sat on the very useful bench/platform in the sun/dappled shade reading! It was lovely. Whilst sat playing cards in the shelter a helicopter flew about 10meters above the tree tops. This was more than a little odd as it was a police helicopter and it could clearly be heard flying up and down the beach. We headed to the viewpoint to see what was happening, only for the helicopter to fly back over and the winch man gave us a wave!  So we headed back to the shelter only for  member of the SES and of Park’s Vic to walk around the corner! Apparently they were looking for a lost walker. He turned up later that day safe and well. 

Wrecks on Wreck Beach

More pictures can be found on Flickr - Australianminiadventure