Planning three days of exploring Wilson’s Promontory National Park? Look no further! This guide outlines a nature & adventure filled three day adventure to see all the native wildlife and view points this beautiful area of Australia has to offer.
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- How to get there
- Where to stay
- Day 1 – Travel to Wilson’s Prom & Miller’s Landing
- Day 2: Wildlife Walk, Tidal River, Mount Oberon, Squeaky Beach & Picnic Bay
- Day 3: Big Drift & drive back to Melbourne
- Optional Extras!
How to get there
Wilson’s Promontory is a three hour drive away from Melbourne, Victoria.
We hired a car from SIXT, but there are plenty of car rental places available across Melbourne.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty much impossible to access this National Park via public transport.
If renting a car isn’t a viable option for you, do not fret! There are various tour operators who can take you on a day trip from Melbourne to Wilson’s Prom.
Where to stay
There is one main campsite within the National Park, called Tidal River. Here, you can rent a campsite, and bring your car and tent or camper van. The location as you are already in the heart of the National Park, so you can access a lot of the hotspots easily from here.
Initially I had planned for us to camp here, but I left it a bit late to organise all the camping gear we’d need.
Instead, we stayed in self-catering cabin accommodation just outside the National Park, in a town called Yanakie.
I highly recommend the Promhills Cabins, where we stayed. It was right by a convenience store and a pizza restaurant. It was around 15 minutes to drive to the entry to the National Park, making the location the perfect base.
Day 1 – Travel to Wilson’s Prom & Miller’s Landing
We picked our rental car up just before 9am, but traffic on the motorway meant we didn’t get to Wilson’s Prom til around 1pm. Despite this hour delay, we made it just in time for our packed lunch. Not including the snack of McDonalds and KFC we had at the services along the way…
First, we parked at Shallow Inlet Car Park, which was really just a dead-end road. We walked around 5-10 minutes to our first destination: Shallow Inlet!
It was incredibly windy here, but the vast landscape with loads of crabs on the sand was a sight to behold.
It started to rain, and we just got a message from our accommodation that we could check in early, so we headed back to the car.
Once we checked in and grabbed some groceries from the shop, we headed to our second destination: Miller’s Landing!
This involved driving to Five Mile Road Car Park. But please note that this road is quite bumpy, and maybe not suitable for most. If you can brave the journey, Miller’s Landing is an extremely unique place, with the southern most mangroves.
We walked around this area for a couple of hours, while the advertised length of time to walk this trail is 1.5 hours return.
If you want to lengthen your walk here, you can include Vereker Outlook to make it a loop back to the car park. This is advertised as a 2 hour return walk.
Instead, we chose to head to the pizza restaurant for dinner. I recommend booking in advance because they aren’t too happy if you show up without one (like we did), and may flip the sign to say they’re closed, even if their opening hours says otherwise..!
Day 2: Wildlife Walk, Tidal River, Mount Oberon, Squeaky Beach & Picnic Bay
After waking up bright and early, we headed to the first destination of the day: Prom Wildlife Walk.
Exactly what it says on the tin, this loop gets your eyes on the native wildlife in their natural habitat. Here, we saw Eastern Grey Kangaroos, Swamp Wallaby’s, and Emu’s – all completely free to roam. This was my first time seeing any of these in the wild and it was such a surreal experience.
The trail is advertised as a 45 minute return but due to our love for wildlife and photography, we were here for a couple of hours.
Next up, we headed to Tidal River. Here, we went for a walk around the campsite, the river, and down to Norman Beach. It was quite a wholesome place, with families camping out for their holidays.
The convenience store there also sold hot food, so we bought a couple of burgers and chips to have for lunch to get our energy up for the next activity: Mount Oberon!
Because we were visiting during a peak time, we got the shuttle bus to the starting point of the Mount Oberon Hike. This is advertised as a 2 hour return walk. However, it is completely uphill the entire way, with a constant zig zag path! So best believe I was getting an absolute sweat on.
I would recommend doing this hike earlier in the day to avoid the afternoon teat. But for the views at the top, it’s definitely worth it.
We returned back to our car and decided to visit the famous Squeaky Beach. Yes, the sand actually squeaks when you walk on it! It’s bizarre, and I would liken it to nails on a chalk board, definitely unique.
The beach itself is stunning with white sand, and the calmness of the ocean rolling in did eventually offset the squeaky sand.
After, we grabbed our cool bags from the car, and headed to Picnic Bay to have our picnic dinner. We were the only people on this beach, it was beautiful, secluded, and so peaceful. As the sun set, we headed back to our accommodation to rest after an eventful day.
Day 3: Big Drift & drive back to Melbourne
We began the morning by watching a beautiful sunrise from the cabin. Once we packed everything up, we headed back in to the National Park one last time for the sand dunes at Big Drift.
While we missed watching the sunrise here as is recommended, we still had a very peaceful experience visiting here.
The walk is around 1.5 hour return, but that’s taking into account a 45 minute walk to the beginning of the sand dunes themselves. So you need to factor in some extra time if you intend to venture further into the area.
Be aware though, wind may wipe away your footprints, meaning you could easily get lost, so definitely be careful here.
Sadly we had to return our hire car and head back to Melbourne, but thankfully there was no traffic on the way back so the journey was much smoother.
Optional Extras!
If you have some more time to explore, here is a list of places we wanted to go to but couldn’t quite find the time to fit them in:
- Lilly Pilly Gully – 1.5 hour return walk through rainforest, near Tidal River.
- Mount Bishop – 2.5 hour return, can be looped with the Lilly Pilly Circuit.
- Whisky Bay – a beach the other side of Picnic Bay.
- Fairy Cove, Tongue Point, Darby Beach – can be combined into a long walk exploring lots of hidden gems in the area.
- Cotters Beach – 1 hour return walk to a wild stretch of coast.
- Pillar Point – 1.5 hour return, views of the beaches but beware of unprotected cliffs.
If you want to know any more information, head to the Parks Victoria website, they have some great recommendations and information. Or you can get in touch with me via my insta @naturetrails_countrytales ❤
If you liked my photos, check out the rest of them in my portfolio!
Thank you so much for reading!
Love, Lydia x
LYD1A KERR 
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