Long Forest – Look for the orange markers, though this one in particular pointed nowhere… sersiously!
About Long Forest
Location
Long Forest is a surprising little gem near Melton, about 50km west of Melbourne.
Nearest Town
Long Forest is between Melton and Bacchus Marsh. Melton is about 8km from Long Forest.
Opening hours
The Park doesn’t appear to have official opening or closing hours.
Activities
Long Forest is a great place for hiking or trail running.
Dogs, horses and other animals are not allowed. And no firearms. There are no vehicle access tracks within the park.
Getting there
From Melbourne, take the Western Highway for about 40km towards Ballarat and take the second Melton exit at Coburns Road. Continue for 5km and cross Djerriwarrh Creek. Continue for about another kilometre and then turn right towards Lake Merrimu. Follow Long Forest Road for 2km and turn into the small car park on the left.
Contact
Call the Parks Victoria office at Bacchus Marsh for information on Long Forest:
Phone: 03 5366 0000
Facilities
Picnic tables and BBQs. No toilets.
Gnarly!
Hiking and Trail Running
Long Forest is a gem of a place to go for a short hike or do some trail running, under an hour from Melbourne.
There are a number of short walks you can do or put a few together and create your own circuit of about 10km:
- Moonah Track – 1.5km return, easy
- Coimadai Track – 5km return, medium
- Happy Valley Track – 4km return, easy
- Djerriwah Track – 3km, easy
To make it worthy of your trip out there, I suggest starting at the car park along Long Forest Road and taking the Happy Valley Track to the Coimadai Track. I had every intention of continuing along this track to Long Point, but somehow got a bit lost and realised we were going in circles when my arm found the same broken branch as earlier (scraaatch!) and my sister recognised her footprint in the mud… so what we did was walk and run along Coimadai track and cut across an unnamed track to Long Point Track and walked along this track for a few hundred metres and then turned right to rejoin the Coimadai Track and then followed the Happy Valley Track back to our car. We had planned on a 10km trail run but it ended up being closer to 8km with us missing Long Point.
Long Forest route
Long Forest elevation
Winter’s sun streaming through the trees at Long Forest
Maps and books
Maps
Books
- A Long Forest Walk features in the guidebook Day Walks Melbourne by John Chapman.
Last modified: June 24, 2018
Great potential. Historic bridge and interesting bush tracks. Good variable inclines.
Sadly it shows what pigs Australians can be as they used this as a rubbish dump. Large amounts of thrown out and trashed old junk furniture and household rubbish. As it is also used by 4 wheel drive vehicles there is also some churned up tracks