Australian Hiker

Over the past few weeks I have sorted out most of the accomodation for this walk with includes hotel/motel accomodation in Portland (Victoria) on the night before we start the walk as well as accomodation on the last night before driving home the next day. We will also do hotel/motel accomodation in Nelson on the nights of day 7 and 8 just a tad over half way at just over 133km into the trip arriving towards the days end. This will provide a full rest day to take a break, finalise and publish the podcast, and wash our clothes. The remainder of the accomodation, 11 nights, will be camping. The campsite bookings are mainly (9 nights) through the Parks Victoria website and at the time of doing this walk (April/May 2026) the was cost $12.80 in total for the two of us each night. Two of those nights were booked directly through the Great South West Walk website and these sites don’t attract any charge.

As part of the accomodation booking we needed to decide which direction we were going to travel on this loop trail. There is nothing stopping you from walking clockwise or anticlockwise however the recommendation is to do this walk in an anticlockwise direction at our chosen time of the year as this direction minimises the impacts of the prevailing winds and provides the best views of the coastal cliffs towards the end of the walk. If doing the walk in summer, the recommendation changes to clockwise, again because of the seasonal winds. In our case we opted for the anticlockwise direction mainly because there is an option to shorten the track by 1 day depending on which option you choose. While we are planning on doing the longer walk, if things aren’t going to plan and we are running behind, we can always do the shorter route to pick up a day.

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