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Victoria (Western Region) |
| Mallee | |
| The
Mallee, the most sparsely populated area
of Victoria, begins north of Warracknabeal, from where the Henty
Highway heads up to join the Sunraysia Highway and forge its way to
Mildura, on the border with New South Wales. This is an area worth
visiting only in winter, when it’s drier and warmer than the rest of
Victoria, but not too hot to make bushwalks unbearable.
You really need your own transport to see anything; just about the only public transport is the small Henty Highway Coach that runs between Horsham and Mildura (departs Horsham BP service station Tues & Thurs 9.15am, Fri 5.45pm; departs Mildura train station Mon, Wed & Fri 7.45am; 4hr; $49; tel 03/5382 4260), which mainly carries freight. Along the way are small dusty towns such as Brim, Bealah and HOPETOUN (“gateway to the Mallee”), whose shops still have their old awnings and apparently their original window displays too. |
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| Hopetoun
is at least somewhere you might have a reason to stop, on the way to Wyperfeld
National Park, 51km away. At 3500 square kilometres, it’s
Victoria’s third largest and has a chain of normally dry lake beds,
mallee scrub, river red gum and black box woodlands, and rolling sand
plains, with emus, kangaroos and mallee fowl among its wildlife.
A sealed road goes to the Wonga Campground, where there’s a shady camping and picnic area with water and toilets, as well as an information centre (tel 03/5395 7221) where you can find out about the many walks in the park; this is also a good area to explore on a mountain bike. The Big Desert Wilderness is directly west of Wyperfeld but can be reached only by the Nhill–Murrayville track that runs between Broken Bucket, northwest of Nhill, and Murrayville, on the Mallee Highway west of Ouyen; there are no tracks, roads or facilities in the park, just more sand dunes, mallee scrub and lots of wildlife. You’ll need a 4WD and considerable dedication to get the most out of it. Beyond Hopetoun, the Henty Highway merges into the Sunraysia Highway. Heading north on the Sunraysia, you come to the small town of SPEED – which could hardly have a less appropriate name; tourist information is available at the general store here. From here the mallee scrub tenaciously clings to the edges of the highway, threatening to invade the red soil of cleared fields on either side, and the equally red dust of the unsealed road. OUYEN, the “heart of the Mallee”, is another small, undistinguished town where two highways meet. Heading west on the Mallee Highway, the access track to the picturesque pink salt lakes of the Murray–Sunset (Yanga–Nyawi) National Park leads north from Linga. Continuing north on the Calder Highway from Ouyen, you pass the Hattah–Kulkyne National Park, just east of the highway; the park consists of dry mallee scrub, native woodland, and a lakes system lined with gums. Lake Hattah is reached by turning off the highway at Hattah, 34km north of Ouyen, onto the Hattah–Robinvale Road. From Hattah it’s less than 70km to Mildura and the Murray River. |
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