Lace-up your hiking boots. We are taking you to the Prom (forget your original date, who would rather jive under a cheap plastic disco ball than experience the profound beauty of the natural world). It’s cooler down here, thanks to the ocean and the coastal breeze, meaning you won’t sweat yourself into non-existence or become an ambassador for beetroot.
The 10km return hike to Tongue Point from the Darby River car park is a great place to start. The walk kicks off with a steep uphill around the side of a hill. As you gain elevation, you score an incredible view of the plain and the Darby River snaking over it. Sometimes, you can pause here and hear the frogs, hundreds of metres away, croaking a deafening chorus.
The walk continues around the hillside, and soon the ocean comes into view; to the far north-west, it’s booming swells hammering into beaches and dunes, whereas in the immediate vicinity it’s calm and clear within the protection of Fairy Cove.
It’s worth taking the optional detour down to this secluded cove. Test your rock hopping by heading to the left, then look back for a great view of smooth boulders washed by transparent blue swell, with the Prom’s trademark green hilly mounds in the background.
Back up the hill and a little further on, you’ll make it Tongue Point itself – a semi-attached island, which you could get onto with a little bit of effort, but which is best appreciated from the mainland.
It’s a great spot to eat lunch in the shade of the rocks, which are gigantic and smooth, often covered in orange moss and textured with deep narrow lines, similar to clay crisscrossed with knife cuts. They recall the likes of Remarkable Rocks in Kangaroo Island and Bay of Fires in Tasmania, and are good fun to navigate and scramble over (embrace your inner squirrel monkey).
Wilsons also has overnight hike options. The places you can reach on these romps can’t be accessed by car, which makes them particularly special and exclusive; you won’t find sugar-hit tourists in these places, because they require effort, dedication and research. I did a taste test recently, walking to Sealers Cove from Telegraph Saddle and thus completing the first leg of a long journey I’m scheming. The track traversed forest and tropical mountainscapes recalling Thailand, before spitting me out at Sealers Cove: a curve of beach and near-stationary water, enclosed by hills on either side.
After that initial taste, I’ll definitely be buying the ice cream, if you catch my drift... going beyond Sealers Cove, pack on back, to Refuge Cove, Little Waterloo Bay and then the lightstation, to make a round trip of 50km.
Hopefully I’ll see you there! ¦