Sometimes you don’t have any plans to go somewhere and somewhere is where you end up being. We were on our way home travelling on a road we don’t normally use and spotted a brown sign for Keperra Bushland Lookout.
The lookout is deep within the Keppera Bushland, about 1.6 kilometres from the entrance with most of it up a steep track. It is also at the highest point in the bushland reserve with Strava recording 185 metres elevation gained, which is a fair amount for a short distance. There are trails to follow in Keppera Bushland, so it has been added here as a walking place rather than a lookout, even though lookout is part of the name.
There are a couple of options to go to the lookout with a loop walk in clockwise or anticlockwise direction or walk up and back along the same trail instead of a loop. We walked it anticlockwise, which ended up the easier direction because one half is sealed bitumen and the other is gravel.
Both are steep, with the gravel sections steeper in parts as it has the whoa-boys, humps for erosion control, creating extra steep sections. We were sliding down on the gravel in parts, which would have been interesting going up instead. The other option is to use the bitumen section both ways, going up and down on a sealed path with more grip on the trail surface.
It took us about an hour and a half to walk the loop, without rushing. We spent some time around the lookout and continued a little further along the track to find it was closed, so there isn’t much point continuing after the lookout.
The photo of the bitumen path shows a bit of a clearing to the right. There is a bit of a view here, in some ways less obscured than the actual lookout. The view is directly over someone’s backyard, so a photo of this view has not been included.
Overall, the gravel trail was in good condition, although the whoa-boys made it harder to hike on. Some were too steep to stay upright, needing to get low and slide on our shoes or where possible, use the side of the trail where it was a little flatter.
The whoa-boys didn’t stop all erosion with some parts showing wear from the weather. Overall, the trail was in decent shape, and we have seen worse erosion elsewhere.
The last photo is looking back on what we had just walked down. This part was at the bottom of the first leg, which we thought would be the end of most of the downward walk.
The trail turns to the left following the powerlines and along Cobalt Street. In the photo you can see the trail down below, from which it starts heading back uphill again.
The last section becomes flat with an easy trail that leads back to the bitumen path, not far from the entrance. Once you return to the entrance, you can choose to go into the other section of Keperra Bushland reserve, or finish the walk. We had a long night and wanted to get home, and it was surprisingly hot for an overcast July day, so we headed home from here.
