December 15th, 2025Lerderderg Track guidebook launched

The 84km-long Lerderderg Track between Daylesford and Bacchus Marsh now has its own guidebook, thanks to the Great Dividing Trail Association.
A team effort by GDTA committee members, the Lerderderg Track Walk or Ride Guide, was launched by the walking group’s patron, Olympian and marathon runner, Steve Moneghetti, last Wednesday at the Bridport Street Lake Daylesford lookout, after a smoking ceremony by local Djaara Elder Uncle Ricky Nelson.

“We now have complete map and track note coverage of the whole of the 300km-long Great Dividing Trail Network captured within a sturdy wiro-bound guidebook format,” said the guidebook’s editor and publisher, Gib Wettenhall.
The Lerderderg Track guidebook will act as a companion to the GDTA’s highly successful, award-winning Goldfields Track Walk or Ride Guide. More than map spreads, the guidebook will follow a similar style and format, sandwiching the large scale 1:17,500 ratio maps and accompanying track notes between essays on the Lerderderg’s wildly diverse natural beauty and vivid slices of its cultural heritage, people and places.
“Although close to Melbourne, the Lerderderg’s formidable, complex terrain has rendered it largely inaccessible – until now,” Gib said.
The publishing of the Lerderderg Track guidebook is timely. After three years’ consideration, the Victorian Parliament finally agreed last month to the formation of the new 44,860-hectare Wombat-Lerderderg National Park, which will double the area under state parks, and embraces the whole of the Lerderderg Track.
Featured for the first time in the Lerderderg Track guidebook are Welcomes to Country from the two Kulin Nation language groups whose traditional lands encompass the Lerderderg Track – the Dja Dja Wurrung in the north and the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung in the south.