With so many state forests NE of
Melbourne closed we have been
continuing to explore other areas we haven't visited for years.
This is not our normal driving area, so those more familar with the area please
add useful information or corrections.
The
Tallarook state forest is a relatively small (10km X 10km) area
to the east of the Hume hwy about 80km north of
melbourne.
Its normally the playground of 4wders from the North and West of
Melbourne.
East
Melbourne drivers can get there in only 90mins from Ringwood area by going up the Melba via YarraGlen Glenburn,
Flowerdale and Strath
creek.
It also acessible from the
Yea to
Seymour rd and via several Hume hwy exits.
We used Rooftop's Toolangi Macedon Adventure map which covers several state forests but still has sufficent detail to be useful.
It is available on the way from Glenburn
United service station.
On the GPS we had Shonky,T4A and CN9 available but they all lacked
most of the non-main roads and were not a lot of help in the forest except towards the end of the drive when we could see our positions relative to our own recorded tracks(Is'nt this is so often the case).
Our immediate destination was the peak and the 3 communication towers at Mt Hickey and we entered the forest via Fairview rd just a few km north of Strath
creek(55 H 345051 5884462).
This road quickly winds up the range into thick forest, then becomes Main rd.
Along the way it quickly became obvious that the area had many short trail bike
and 4wd tracks and many of these were not mapped or signposted.
There were so many little offshots that we quickly gave up exploring them.
We would slow down and look down each one and if there was a big puddle,
well we'd drive it and return.
Main rd cuts right thru the forest from east to west but we took a turn off and drove to Mt Hickey (55 H 335996 5883929).
It was windy cold and showery up their and trees have grown up and mostly destroyed the view.
From the peak we noticed that a narrow rocky track continued on over
the summit edge and was deciding wether to try it when all of a sudden a modified Discovery appeared and went straight down it. Ok, that can't be hard and we immediately took off as
well! It quickly became a boulder strew rocky challenge with ledges, but it was not steep so was more of a good exercise in control and wheel placement and is good training track.
The discovery was out of sight before we gracefully slid into the gutter at the tracks end.
The track is un-named but shown on the map and winds around to main rd in less than 2km.
Reccomended for fun !
We were now on the western end of main rd we turned around to drive back east and passed many more tracks and interesting little bits.
We began to see several seasonally closed gated roads including what appeared
to be a lovely
camp area call "Flat Rock" , but there were also many open tracks.
We wandered round to another
camp on a Hillside which was
well used with about 20 parked vehicles.
Its called Freemans
camp and it was complete with twin
toilets and 2 or 3 groups had fires going.
A
ranger in a V8 troppy was checking some bikes there.
The road was quite wet around here and being by ourselves we decided not to do several interesting tracks like Phone track.
Well actually it took a slide and a big rocks hit on the diff to help make this decision.
We wound our way round to Horans track (55 H 337823 5884480) and left the forest to the south via it.
Horans track is a very pretty 2wd ridge top drive thru farmland with magnificent
views.
There are some
camping spots and play areas along it before you leave the forest.
We stopped and made afternoon tea at one point called Lone tree
hill from which you could see the valleys to both sides and also look back at the forest and Mt Hickey.
Horans rd soon meets a bitumen road at
Murchison gap(55 H 337685 5876122).
From there a great driving road winds down to the valley and back around to Strath
creek which completed
the loop for us.
All in all a very pleasant forest, similar in many ways to the Pyrennes.
Plenty of tracks and
well worth the visit even for a day drive.