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Length: 14km
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Duration: 4hrs
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Grade: 3
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Style: Circuit
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Start: Woolrich Lookout
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End: Woolrich Lookout
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Closest Town: Olinda
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Location: Dandenong Ranges
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Distance from state capital: 46km
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State: VIC
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Latitude: -37.86000217
Longitude: 145.38156837
Olinda Falls and Valley is a 14km, grade 3 Circuit hike located in Dandenong Ranges Victoria. The hike should take approximately 4hrs to complete.
Summary
The Olinda Falls and Valley Circuit is a very picturesque walk through the Olinda Forest area. This is a highly varied walk through some really beautiful native bush, but the R.J. Hamer Forest Arboretum provides some highly varied introduced trees. It can almost feel like a walk around the world. This version includes a short side trip to the Olinda Falls. You’ll likely hear and see a lot of birdlife here as well, especially the Lyrebird.
Start at Woolrich Lookout, near the toilet block you’ll see the Dam Rd track, follow that then follow Sequoia, Rock, KC, Rifle Range Gully and then Bartlett to reach the road. Follow that briefly looking out for Cascade Track on the right. Follow this until you see the side track off to the Olinda Falls to the right. The falls are quite small, but a worthwhile short visit. Return back to Cascade Track to follow that north until you reach Barbers Road. Turn right and shortly you’ll see VW Track to your right. This is a fairly gentle walk uphill until you reach Barges. Take this left, follow to the junction to continue on Barges until you reach the junction with Georges. Continue along this, note it passes some junctions and eventually meets Eagle Track to take you to Valley Picnic Ground. From here you can take Black Hole Track, then Yallambee Way to join Matthias then back up to Woolrich Lookout.
Getting there
Make your way to Olinda, follow the Olinda-Monbulk Road for 900 metres approx, turn left onto Chalet Road. Look for the carpark at the lookout.
Tips
The area is a real maze of trails with many possible combinations to take. It is essential to take a map to ensure you don’t get lost.
- There tends to be a lot of vandalism of signs, so don’t rely on these being there.
- Leeches can be encountered so bring your favourite leech repellent/remedy.
Max elevation: 508 m
Min elevation: 254 m
Total climbing: 1085 m
Total descent: -1087 m
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11 thoughts on “Olinda Falls and Valley (14km)”
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Heading out there today ? love this walk
Very good walk. Appreciate the map you provided as the trail was barely marked at all. Can easily get lost there.
That is a great way to extend the walk to the falls, rather than straight down from the nearby falls car park. Fabulous variety of forest too.
This is a really pleasant walk and a great one for introducing people to hiking
I agree – it is a lovely walk, very varied scenery and quite challenging with the regular elevation changes. Beautiful scenery at the start especially. A little confusing at the KC track as there were fallen trees and we somehow stumbled inadvertently onto the boundary track and got a little lost. All in all, lots of fun though. Definitely need a map/enable gps with the route to keep on track. Thank you for the recommendation!
Thank you Verushka. Glad you enjoyed the hike
Anyone know if dogs on leads are aloud in this area?
Hi Matt. Sorry but no dogs allowed
This hike is really nice- it’s mostly shaded and on a mix of wide, well packed tracks and small, winding almost overgrown ones. These directions are good but you’ll need a good map – I recommend Maps.me – it’s free and works offline and all the tracks are on there.
You can easily mix it up by taking other tracks and just exploring the area. It’s very beautiful.
No water or toilets at the Valley Picnic Ground btw.
Very grateful for the GPX map as a few times I wasn’t certain which route to take.
Completed mid May 2018 – there are sections of fire trail that were very slippery and sticky clay that you’ll benefit from trekking poles or a good stick.
I enjoyed this a lot but my favourite sections were definitely the more narrow foot trail parts through forest and when I go back I’d modify my route to include more of them.
The arboretum is quite lovely in Autumn with the deciduous trees being all sorts of colours and the leaf confetti underfoot.
No leeches encountered, but many interesting fungi to be observed.
Saw a deceased dunnart (?), or other native small animal near the falls (not a rat, long nose).
Pretty tired after this one!
Hi all, did this hike today, has become a new favourite. Great variety, and trails, though definitely need a map/nav. I used the ViewRanger app with my Apple Watch 3, works so well using the Gpx from here, thanks.