Cape Conran Coastal Park, Victoria

This is surely one of the best coastal parks in Victoria. You can book accomodation within the park but it's in strong demand so you need to book around six months ahead of your trip. There's a series of Cabins with showers in the park. Each cabin even has a functional Kitchen including a refrigerator and accomodates around six people; four sleeping bags in the loft and two below.

How to get there. Cape Conran is a long way from Melbourne, situated in the far East of Coastal Gippsland. To get there you head along the Princess Highway, past Orbost or Marlo, and take the turn off to Cape Conran using the Conran-Cabbage tree Road or the Cape Conran Road. The park is reasonably close to the Snowy Mountains National Park too, so it can be a useful base to explore that Park as well as many others such as the Begg River National Park, the Errinundra National Park and the Lake Tyers Forest Park. The last three are quite close to Cape Conran. Having said that, I should tell you that I consider anything within a forty minute drive to be "just next door". Once there, you can do a variety of coastal walks. But there's also a number of inland walks with heathland, woodlands (the trees are quite small, must be the sea air). You can also do a walk to Teerung Gorge which I didn't have time to do.

If you come to Cape Conran you'll want to do make sure you do the coastal walks. You get the some mystical views walking along the coast from the East Cape along the Yeerung Beach near the Yeerung River. If you continue along to the East Cape you'll see an interpretive boardwalk that details the area's coastal Koori culture. The best time to do this is early morning or at sunset. You'll get some great photos too.

Pictures: 1.Harsh Coast, 2.Marine still life, 3 and 4 View of Yeerung Beach, 5 View taken walking towards the East Cape from Yeerung Beach.