Dights Falls on the Yarra - Both Sides Now

Jun 14, 2015

This is a magic riverside urban bushwalk, just a few km from the City

The forecast was a for a lovely winters day. So I decided this morning to do this as I’d never actually seen Dights Falls on the Yarra River near Collingwood. It’s a natural barrier which stops brackish water from moving further upstream. Anyway, I had a rough route in my head. In fact I had what’s called a map in my hand.

Turns out I made a wrong assumption – I could pick up the map’s walk from the Studley Park Boathouse – but it ended up meaning I did two excellent walks instead:

a) From the train at Victoria Park station to the Boathouse, then over the footbridge and a walk north of the Yarra up to the Falls. It was there I realised I was on the wrong side of the river, with no way to cross. So I just doubled back (see map with log below)

b) I then sat down and worked out where the ‘real’ walk starts from so I did that (see below)

Photos

Flickr album is located here

Map with GPS Logs

Here’s the exact GPS logs from the phone, loaded into OziExplorer with Open Street Maps as the base map. Click on the image to enlarge.

1) Red: From the Victoria Park station to the Boathouse, over Kane’s Bridge and then North of the river to Dights Falls. Was here I turned around and returned back to the Boathouse

2) Blue: From the Boathouse car park, clockwise to where the ‘real’ walk starts (sort of where the Blue and Green log lines meet). This blue line continues clockwise to Dights Falls (but now from the other side), the Historical Marker, Galatea Point and back to Yarra Boulevard. BTW the Boulevard is a ghost road; this one-way loop section of it is closed to cars.

3) Green: For clarity I reset the GPS here to capture the final bit of the ‘real’ walk. South then West back to the station (with a diversion to Victoria Park footy ground).

I plan to merge these into a single walk with my little side trips and flubs removed. Total distance today was 12.5km.