The 100 Kilometre Trail

The Melbourne Trail

The Oxfam Trailwalker challenge requires teams to complete the 100 Kilometres walk / run event (62.5 miles) from Jells Park in Wheelers Hill (a suburb of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia) to Wesburn Park in the Yarra Valley (Victoria), within a total time 48 hours .

The entire trail is along parkland and bush with very few road crossings. The trail begins with the wide open spaces of Jells Park in Wheelers Hill. Passing south-east through the Corhanwarrabul Wetlands then east through the Churchill and Lysterfield National Parks. The trail heads north through Belgrave and into the beautiful Dandenong Ranges National Park.
From here it travels east along the Warburton Trail before looping south of Warburton to the ups and downs of Mt Little Joe, finishing in the expansive Wesburn Park. There are eight checkpoints between the start and finish located approximately every 11 kilometres along the trail.

Here's an overview of the trail with the check points labelled:

The Oxfam 100 km Trail (Melbourne 2008)

Here's some detailed information for the more technically minded readers and those that want to explore the trail, virtually or really! For our offshore readers, I have included a map of Australia to show where the state of Victoria is (it is in the South-East). The map next to it shows you where Yarra Valley is with reference to Melbourne CBD (also in the South-East of Victoria).

North-West

South-East

Australia and the states

Victoria and Yarra Valley

Information about the trail sections and check points.

1. Start to Check Point 1 - (Jells Park Tea House, Wheelers Hill to Churchill National Park Picnic Grounds) - 12.5 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 12.5 kilometres)


2. Check Point 1 to Check Point 2 (Churchill National Park Picnic Grounds to Lysterfield Lake Picnic Area) - 9 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 21.5 kilometres)


3. Check Point 2 to Check Point 3 (Lysterfield Lake Picnic Area to Grants Picnic Ground) 13.3 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 34.8 kilometres)


4. Check Point 3 to Check Point 4 (Grants Picnic Ground to Olinda Reserve) 11.7 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 46.5 kilometres)


5. Check Point 4 to Check Point 5 (Olinda Reserve to Silvan Reservoir Park) 8 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 54.5 kilometres)


6. Check Point 5 to Check Point 6 (Silvan Reservoir Park to Graham Colling Reservc) 8.5 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 63.0 kilometres)


7. Check Point 6 to Check Point 7 (Graham Colling Reservc to Worri Yallock Primary School) 13.0 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 76.0 kilometres)


8. Check Point 7 to Check Point 8 (Worri Yallock Primary School to Milwarra Primary School) 14.5 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 90.5 kilometres)


9. Check Point 9 to Fnish (Milwarra Primary School to Wesburn Park) 9.5 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 100.0 kilometres)

You can watch a fascinating tour of the entire trail on Google Earth. You will need the Google Earth application to view the tour in three dimensions - Terrain, buildings and all. Please download Google Earth here - It's free. You will also need the tour file, created by Oxfam. That can be downloaded here - Google Earth Tour of Jells Park to Wesburn Park.

Enjoy the virtual tour. That is the closest I can bring you to experiencing the 100 km walk across the bush, without leaving your comfortable seat.

Do visit this site often and check out our posts to the upper-left of this screen.

In conclusion, we leave you wih this wonderful image from Google Earth showing the terrain, check points and other detail. You can view all this in 3-D animation with Google Earth and the file.

Looking forward to your comments on this post.

Have a great day!