The walk that Year 10 built

By Earth to Sea News · August 2026

A 262 kilometre loop through the far south west of Victoria, cut by hand by school students and kept going by volunteers ever since.

In 1981 and 1982, Year 10 students and staff from Portland High School went out with hand tools and cut a walking track through the far south west of Victoria. It opened in November 1983 and it is still there: a loop of about 262 kilometres that leaves from the visitor centre in Portland, on Gunditjmara Country, and comes back to the same door a fortnight later. The Friends of the Great South West Walk have looked after it ever since, roughly fifty active volunteers who work the track every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Jen Johns, who is their president, gives a sense of the scale of that: “Every year, we log more than 7,000 hours of work for the trail. When you factor in the time spent planning activities and running committees, the real figure could be twice that amount.” Two hours east sits the Great Ocean Walk, with all the traffic. This one is what Victorian bushwalking clubs quietly recommend instead.

It comes in four chapters. Tall forest through Cobboboonee, then the Glenelg River winding through limestone gorge, then fifty five kilometres of white sand along Discovery Bay where you may not see anybody at all, and finally the capes: Cape Bridgewater with the highest sea cliffs in Victoria and blowholes going off below you, Cape Nelson with its lighthouse. Fourteen hikers only campsites sit ten to twenty kilometres apart, each with a shelter, a rainwater tank and a pit toilet, and they must be booked. You do not have to do the whole thing either, since it breaks into 31 shorter walks from half a kilometre to about twenty two. Be honest with yourself about the full loop though: the Friends grade the terrain easy to medium, which is fair, but fifteen to twenty five kilometres a day for two weeks and fifty five kilometres of soft sand is genuine work. The tank water is untreated, tides matter on the rocky headlands, and there is a signed diversion in place south of Cut Out Camp, so check before you go. Peter Hill, a ranger team leader with Parks Victoria, sums up who the walk really belongs to: “The walk is internationally recognised but it's powered by local passion. Without the Friends group, the Great South West Walk wouldn't exist in the way we know it today.”