Week 24 – Pomonderoo Hill and West Wail Reserve
1 – Pomponderoo Hill, near Dimboola
Took less than 15 minutes
2- West Wail Conservation Reserve
Reserve between farming properties for close to Wimmera River
40 minute walk flat and pretty much on rough vehicle track
Today’s walk (which did in early March) takes place in two locations. One is a popular and well formed 30 minute track through a sand hill just outside Dimboola and the other was a random ramble through one of the many reserves on the edge of the desert between Dimboola and Horsham.
The first stop was Pomponderoo Hill walk, just half an hour, and reached from Dimboola via Horseshoe bend road and then Pomponderoo Hill Road.
Sandy hill with formed track and plenty of desert plants
It is a sandy rise that provides pretty amazing views across the Little Desert.
There are not many hills in the Wimmera so getting a view like this is a treat.
Many will think it is just another sandy track. And yes it is but look around and there are quite a few plants miraculously thriving in the sandy landscape.
I see some really beautiful banksias and am surprised to see them flowering so well in mid autumn.
The gum trees also have some really lush green leaves and even the tiny buds on some of shrubs make for nice pics.
It’s like trudging through a sand dune at the beach, with bathers replaced by trees. Some of them are very gnarly too, hardened by too many days and years under unrelenting sun.
It is all worth it when I get to the viewing platform. Some awesome panoramas and little white clouds floating like cotton wool on a bright blue sky.
You get to see a big view of the desert to the south and it makes for interesting looking.
In one direction there is a forest of pines just plonked in the middle of the scrub and then in another we see Mt Arapiles Duyritte.
The tracks winds down the hill and around and passes more banksia and chunky buloke seed pods and some beautiful grasses.
A short stroll oaf about 1km but well worth the trip to Dimboola
I need to do some more walking and am not game to drive along the sandy rack past horseshoe bend back to Horsham so opt for a return route on the western side of the river and settle for the West Wail Conservation Reserve on the Wail Polkhemmet Road..
It is big reserve but I decide to do one corner which covers about 3km
The first quarter of the square track looks out onto an adjoining farm. It is pretty sandy – probably the reason the trees were not cleared in the first place – and there is a bit of salt bush and red pig face growing along the edge.
It has been pretty hot and the eucalypts are shedding their bark, bit like skin peeling off after sunburn.
Loss of bark has revealed smooth pale limbs in an appaloosa-like mix of white, pale yellow and tan,
Out in the paddock is an ancient thatch shed stands abandoned under a few big gums. It seems to have a lot of ‘bark off too’ and it won’t get grow back next year.
I look down on the track and see some horse hoof prints. I also hear a few random shots in the distance. Is West Wail a little bit wild?
I find a lichen covered log that looks like big hairy lizard and another branch that just screams elephant trunk. But no cowboys.
It is getting late so I search for the track to take me back to the road and along the way find the remains of an old channel that probably once fed a dam over the fence.
There are few native pines growing in the reserve and other flowering shrubs and I pass a couple of trees that have scars.
It is a not walk of many discoveries but nice bit of bush no less and in the cleared farming landscape that is Wimmera – any remnant bush is something to cherish.
52 weeks 52 walks 