Duwul & Durd Durd Hike (34.5km)

Long ridgelines rise abruptly from the western Victorian plains in Grampians National Park, creating a landscape of sandstone escarpments, gullies and sheltered valleys that feels distinct from the farming country around it. The park stretches between the Wimmera and the volcanic plains of the state's west, and that contrast helps explain why walks here can move so quickly between open rock, dry forest and cool, water-cut creeks. At 167,219 hectares, it is one of Victoria's largest inland parks, large enough to contain several separate mountain blocks rather than a single compact range.

This is also Gariwerd, an ancient cultural landscape with deep and continuing importance to Traditional Owners. The park is represented in current management by Barengi Gadjin Land Council, Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation and Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation. Rock shelters and art sites are a central part of that story, and the area holds the richest concentration of Aboriginal rock art in Victoria. Seeing the ranges only as a scenic backdrop misses much of what makes the region distinctive: these cliffs, shelters, water sources and plateaus are part of a lived-in cultural country with meanings carried across many thousands of years.

Geology gives the Grampians much of its character. Massive sandstone walls stand above surrounding plains, while exposed outcrops, fissured cliffs and weather-shaped rock platforms create the bold forms the region is known for. In places the ranges are cut by creeks and waterfalls, while elsewhere they broaden into more remote country such as the Victoria Range, Serra Range and Major Mitchell Plateau. Those changes in elevation, aspect and shelter help produce striking shifts in vegetation over relatively short distances.

The park is equally important for its plant life. It supports a large share of Victoria's flora and is especially well regarded for spring wildflower displays, when heaths, orchids and flowering shrubs can transform sections of the ranges. Its mix of forests, heathy woodlands, rocky outcrops and wetlands also provides habitat for threatened native animals, including the brush-tailed rock-wallaby and heath mouse. For walkers, that means the Grampians are not just dramatic country to look across, but a biologically varied mountain landscape whose detail changes with season, rainfall and fire.