Walks, Tracks & Trails of Victoria
category: travel, author:Derrick Stone
original copyright 2009,read in April 2011
Agamedes' opinion: 4 out of 10
This is a glossy book with a lot of information. As a potential tourist -- someone who plans to visit Victoria and who would like to do some walking -- this book is useless. For a start, there is no overall map. Where are all these walks?!The walks are grouped by area: north-west, central west, south-west and so on. But where are they? These areas may make sense to a Victorian -- but I need more information. For example...
Okay, so "north-west" will be to the north-west of Victoria. How big an area? In Western Australia the "north-west" could be a quarter of a very large state. What is it in Victoria?
What sort of country would I expect to find in the "north-west"? Flat? hilly? mountain? desert...? There are a dozen "easy" walks and one "easy/med". In "central west" there are four "hard" walks... They seem to be in mountains ("Grampians"). How hard is "hard"?! Is "north-west" also mountains but the walks are in the easy valleys?
The book needs an introduction to each area. With a brief description -- for people who do not know the area. And a map, to place the walks in their area, within Victoria.
Then there's the Major Mitchell Trail. According to the icons it's for experienced walkers, day hike, family walk, drive and walk, push bike and horse-riding. The trail is 1700km and should take six days. All that, in six days!
Then there's the photos. Take -- as an example -- page 19:
There is a photo of "River red gums." And another of "Scar tree at Wood Wood." Are they mentioned in the text? Not as far as I can see. Are they at all relevant to the text? Well... I can see Wood Wood on the map, though there is no sign of where a "Scar tree" would be found.
This seems to be the standard approach for Australian "guide books": a few large scale maps, lots of text explaining why it's worth visiting the area, a few very pretty photos. No clear relationship between the text, the maps and the photos.
It's not a guide to the Walks, Tracks & Trails. It's an advertisement. All very glossy, all very attractive. Obviously these would be great places to visit. Pick any one and the book tells you how to get there.
But no help whatsoever if you are trying to decide, Where can I go to enjoy a whole lot of walking in Victoria.
For an independent and thoughtful review of your processes, problems or documents, email nickleth at gmail dot com. |
2 comments:
Yep I understand your comment, I have another book on walks in Victoria, "150 Walks in Victoria By Tyrone Thomas and Andrew Close". Same problem you mention : there's no overall map so you have no idea where these walks are. And this one doesn't even have photos : it's a nightmare to select where you wanna go, you have to read everything. There's a map of Victoria with some arrows pointed at the general areas, but no real zones so it's really vague. The maps for the walks are hand-drawned and don't feel neither precise nor clear.
But all those problems have been solved in their book on Tasmania, I just wish they had done the same for Victoria.
There's also "Day Walks Victoria By John Chapman, Monica Chapman, John Siseman", from the previews, the maps look definitely better, maybe you could try this one.
Hallu,
Thanks for your comment. Sorry it's taken a while to reply...
I'm just back from another trip, to Europe. This time I tried a different approach to "familiarisation" with my destination. I did try reading a couple of books but they were too narrow in what they covered. I needed an overview. So I simply browsed the web.
Wikipedia, of course, for starter info on each destination. Then hotlinks to anything that looked interesting. And general searches on topics that took my fancy. Again, we were looking for places to walk, so a few searches on "walking in [...]".
Some of the web info was very useful, some was useless. Lots of links lead to advertisements, though even this had some value. I gained a broad understanding of places that I had never really thought about before.
Finally, we did much the same as we did in Victoria: arrived in a new place and looked for a tourist information office...
Perhaps the trouble with a book -- such as the one that I reviewed above -- is that it is too specific. Only useful when you already know exactly what you intend to do. And the tourist information websites are often the opposite: glossy advertisements which say very little.
Browsing the web and reading a large number of small snippets... worked very well. For us :-)
Post a Comment