Day Trip Melbourne: 52 Nature Adventures

Day Trip Melbourne: 52 Nature Adventures - Book Review

This series of books continues on from the previously released Day Trip Sydney: 52 Nature Adventures and its partner Dog Trip Sydney: 52 Dog-Friendly Nature Adventures and now sees the release of the Melbourne versions of these books.

Given the sheer number of available guide books already on the market you can be forgiven for wondering why we need more? The authors Andrew Grune and Evi O while keen hikers don’t class themselves as highly experienced. The thing that stands out with this book series is that it’s written for the average person, who may or may not be into hiking, but can easily understand and appreciate the material on offer. As such, Day Trip Melbourne: 52 Nature Adventures is first and foremost a guidebook designed to encourage the average person to get out and about in Melbourne and the surrounding region.

The walks are identified in a number of ways with the walk key at the front of the book being an integral part of choosing a walk. The first key identifier is by direction from the city CBD and South, North, East and West. Within those directions are grouping distances from the CBD – 23-130 km to the west, 22-103 km to the north, 32-120km to the east and 2-119 km to the south including the CBD – which is a great way of identifying how much time you need to get to the walk start. From there the key provides the basic information such as walk distance and difficulty along with facilities including cafes, BBQs, picnic areas, dog access and more which is an easy way to identify what sort of experience is right for you.

The images in this book for each of these walks, like its Sydney counterpart, can be best described as ‘hero images’. More so in this book is the use of drone images, and something you don’t commonly see is hikes done in the snow as the walks were undertaken in the Victorian winter. Many pre-existing guidebooks, while full of information are very basic in their use of images and by using quality images, and book production to go with it, you can flick through this book and identify what you wish to see even before you read any detail.

The details on each of the walks includes enough of the main features to allow you to get there and do the walk without going heavily in-depth but it does provide what’s necessary including small maps. The layout of the book, the language used and the overall presentation are all designed to encourage the average person to get out and visit these hikes and in that respect they have hit the mark. The walks cover a range of locations and provide a variety of payoffs from beaches, to views, to urban hikes and everything in between including hikes in the snow if you feel so inclined.

This guidebook is very well done and importantly it encourages you to get out and explore. I’m not familiar with many of  the shorter walks in Victoria and this book has provided me with a ‘to do’ list to work my way through when I’m next on a visit.

Chapter Headings

Day Trip Sydney: 52 Nature Adventures

• Introduction p5
• Trip list p6
• Daytripping p8
• CBD & South p11
• North p51
• East p79
• West p157
• Acknowledgements p238
• About the authors p239