Toorongo Falls

Drove out to Toorongo Falls a few weekends ago, out near Noojee — punch in 640 Toorongo Valley Rd if you're navigating, that's the actual address. From the southeast side of Melbourne it took us about an hour and a half, so not exactly close, but not a brutal drive either. There's a loop track that goes around the reserve. Most people go in through the entrance on the right and come out the other side on the left, and doing the whole loop took us about forty minutes. Nothing strenuous — we had a couple of kids with us and nobody complained the whole way. You pass two smaller waterfalls along the way. At the second one there's actually a bit of a hidden path — there's a guardrail near the big rock, and you can just climb over it pretty easily. We found wild berries back there, and tadpoles in one of the pools, which the kids loved. Just be careful if you go off that way, obviously, since it's not really the marked track. Wear shoes with decent grip. The whole trail was muddier than I expected, even though it hadn't rained that recently. One bottle of water per person was enough for us — the entire path is under tree cover so you're not really exposed to the sun, so go whenever the weather's comfortable, temperature isn't a huge factor here. Once you're in there, your phone loses signal completely. There's also nowhere to buy food, so if you think you'll get hungry, bring some snacks with you. On the way back, the first half of the return path is a bit easy to lose track of — either remember the turns on the way in, or just keep half an eye on your phone's map and head roughly in the direction of your parked car. Toorongo Falls Reserve, if you're looking it up.