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Length: 8.5km
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Duration: 3.5hrs
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Grade: 3
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Style: Circuit
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Start: Meikles Point Picnic area
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End: Meikles Point Picnic area
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Closest Town: Bacchus Marsh
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Location: Werribee Gorge State Park
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Distance from state capital: 69km
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State: VIC
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Latitude: -37.6692193
Longitude: 144.35620378
Werribee Gorge Circuit is an 8.5km, grade 3 Circuit hike located in Werribee Gorge State Park Victoria. The hike should take approximately 3.5hrs to complete.
Summary
This Werribee Gorge Circuit hike explores the length of the Werribee Gorge. Starting at Meikles Point Picnic area follow the Werribee River to the north west. The first part of the walk follows a disused water channel built between 1926 and 1929 to supply irrigation to the local area.
The trail is quite awkward from this point until Needles Beach as it hugs the base of a few small cliffs. Needles beach is a good place for a rest stop. Follow the trail along the eastern side of the river as far as Blackwood pool. The trail then leaves the river to ascend a rocky ridge to western viewpoint. A great spot to take in the twisting river below.
Continue to walk east from Western viewpoint past picture point, which overlooks Needles Beach, and on to Eastern Viewpoint where you can take in a view of the Island. From Eastern Viewpoint you now have the option of following the short circuit trail back to Meikles Point or continuing east past the Hanson Farm ruins back to the quarry car park.
The trail from the carpark now follows Myers road for a few hundred metres. Leave the road and follow the trail across a few shallow gullies before descending Pattersons spur via a vehicle management track and back to Meikles Point.
Tips
- Trail can be taken in any direction.
- The river is prone to flooding so avoid after heavy rains.
- Walking poles will be beneficial.
- Alternate short circuit walk.
- Additional return walk to The Island via Centenary track.
Max elevation: 356 m
Min elevation: 137 m
Total climbing: 343 m
Total descent: -333 m
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4 thoughts on “Werribee Gorge Circuit (8.5km)”
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My playground 🙂
Amazing walk, with good lookouts and picturesque river scenes. Not to hard but hard enough to be interesting.
Best to start this hike from Meikles Point Picnic area (the very bottom car park) then head ANTI-clockwise (as oppose to the above directions). This will get all the uphill section out of the way at the start, and let you enjoy the river section on the way home with no more ascents.
Also, sticking to the trail, the full circuit hike is only 8.1km, which, most people will do in under 3 hours. Not sure what the 9.3km described is based from.
Good hike, but could do with some additional signage, due to its proximity to Melb, get alot of tourist hikers, and admittedly, when your in the carpark, its kind of hard to understand which way you need to go and how the 3 carparks all link up. People often wonder ‘where is my car?’ because they’re actually in a different carpark.
Additionally, because of the circuit and it being uni-directional, the track seems very busy, you’ll constantly be crossing paths with people coming the opposite direction.
A nice easy hike, but don’t expect solitude.
Thanks Ragnar (nice fake name by the way). The hike description does mention starting at Meikles Point Picnic area. People can choose any direction they like to complete this circuit. I always try to detail circuits on this site so that people are ascending the steepest sections because I have a lot of people mention to me that this is easier on their knees than struggling with a steep descent. Up to each person how they prefer to approach it really.
The trail distance of 9.3 has been updated, thanks for picking that up. That was an error in the gpx file as it included the short circuit track option. I have now removed that section and the recorded distance is now 7.6km. If you still believe it is 8.1km it would be great if you can share your gps recording with me so that I can update the site info accordingly. The 7.6km was the recorded length when I last did the hike. GPS devices do vary so I’d be interested to see how you calculated the total.
Agree with it being busy. I used to love coming to this park for the solitude it offered and would hike here every weekend but these days it is very heavily traversed.