Destinations: Nelson and the Glenelg River, Victoria

It’s been an exercise to get here. Nelson is a small town nestled on the point where the mighty Glenelg River, around 350km long, meets Bass Strait. To the west, Adelaide via the Princes Highway is roughly five hours away. Heading east to Melbourne along the Hamilton Highway will save you around 15 minutes of travel time. 

There’s not much here in terms of infrastructure, either. There’s a servo, a pub, the tourist information centre, a post office that also stocks frozen bait, and a nice park with toilets, barbecues and benches. Accommodation choices abound, from caravan parks to motels. Big trailer boats stream past heading to the bluewater ports; tuna fishing season is in full swing and the action on the barrels is hot.

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We’re using the two-lane Nelson boat ramp to launch at. Once you’re in, turn south, and it’s a short trip past the shallow Oxbow Lake, hugging the channel that bends to the northern side, to Discovery Bay. Smaller tiller-steer boats can sneak into the shallower waters here, but large sandbanks mean only kayaks can venture right up to the mouth where the surf pounds away in the distance.

Wildlife abounds, and the fishing here is usually good. When the entrance is closed, bream and estuary perch are the target species. When the mouth is open the focus swaps to Australian salmon, mullet, trevally, flathead, tailor and even mulloway. 

Tides in the lower reaches of the Glenelg are an hour or so behind Portland, about 70km to the southeast.  You can easily see where the saltwater flowing into the river system pushes up against the freshwater trying to get out.

Lower down, the entrance is choked with acres of rope-like kelp beds sitting just below the surface. It’s best to hunt along at 5.0 knots – if you go any faster your spinning prop can snatch up kelp and stall. We discovered this the hard way.

The other choice after launching is to turn north past the Isle of Bags – named by explorer Thomas Mitchell after the local Gunditjmara people grabbed a stash of flour he’d left on the island – and head under the Nelson bridge spanning the high, gorge-like banks of the Glenelg River. The river is on the Victorian side of the Limestone Coast, a wild, rugged and beautiful section of coastline hugging south-eastern South Australia.

Just north of Nelson, the Glenelg catchment transforms into the Lower Glenelg National Park, bringing low scrub right up to the shoreline.

The lower reaches of the river feature steep banks rising on either side. All along the shoreline are clusters of small shacks that act as boatsheds and weekenders for quasi-locals.

The landscape quickly changes. Steep banks give way to sheer limestone rock faces framing the water. Around one bend, you change states, passing out of Victoria into South Australia and dropping from 6.0 knots to just 4.0.

Each bend in the river is a surprise. Here is a cluster of boats working the banks chasing black bream. Then it’s a landing site nestled in the bank, a small landing leading up to an inviting picnic ground. The next? Another cluster of boathouses hanging off the steep slope.

If we keep going we’ll end up in the Grampians. However, it’s really only the lower 75 kilometres of the river that are navigable by boat with Dartmoor, 30 minutes away by road, considered a fitting end.

Various camping grounds, accessible by road or the water, back onto the river, as do myriad launching ramps for getting a tinnie wet. Names like Donovans, Pine Landing, Battersby, Hutchessons and McLennans Punt all offer basic facilities and fishing jetties.

Phone reception? Forget it, the service is patchy at best. It's a place where you can really lose yourself.

Nelson is located on the south-west Victorian coast 470km from Adelaide and 410km from Melbourne. It’s really an extended long weekend destination, but getting there past some of the most picturesque parts of SA and Victoria is all part of the adventure.

The Adelaide trip passes some inviting enclosed estuaries, while Victorians can come via the inland route through Hamilton or the Grampians, where the Glenelg has its headwaters, or the coastline via some of the earliest European settlements in Australia.

Fuel is available in Nelson so you will not need to carry any. However, if you plan on an extended trip up the Glenelg River, pack some jerry cans to help extend your range.

Mobile phone reception is good around Nelson but becomes patchy as soon as you head into the Lower Glenelg National Park.

The post office carries a few essentials so you can restock the food reserves. The historic Nelson Hotel offers meals and accommodation.

The Victorian Bream Classics catch-and-release competition visits Nelson in April, basing its operations at the pub. Finding accommodation and a pub meal may be difficult.

Parks Victoria has a map of the Glenelg River system showing the locations of boat-accessible campgrounds and other features along the banks.