> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Ten thousand steps through the place of plenty, five kilometres from Ballarat
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/woowookarung/
- Published: 2026-09-08T20:51:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-08T20:51:42.000Z
- Description: Woowookarung Regional Park turned ten this winter with a new eight kilometre loop, a new bridge, and a Welcome to Country from the daughter of the Elder who welcomed its first walkers a decade ago.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Explore, All stories

Five kilometres from the centre of Ballarat, on Wadawurrung Country, 641 hectares of old state forest, mining and timber land became a park in 2016 because the people of Ballarat East, Canadian and Mount Clear asked for it. They named it too. Woowookarung is the Wadawurrung word for a place of plenty, plenty of food, shelter, medicine and culture, chosen through community consultation and announced in 2017 as a park named for, and by, the community. Ten years on, in the first week of August during the city's Biodiversity Week, 35 walkers stepped over the park's new bridge and onto its new trail, the 10,000 Steps Loop: eight kilometres of formed track, about three hours on foot, through messmate stringybark forest and stands of grass trees, with seasonal wildflowers, pink heath and native pea among them, a few climbs, and a lookout across Ballarat towards Mount Clear. It starts from the Katy Ryans Road carpark, suits walkers, runners and bikes, and dogs are welcome on a lead. Aunty Joy Oldaker, a Wadawurrung Elder, gave the Welcome to Country, ten years after her mother welcomed the park's first visitors. When we care for Country, she said, Country cares for us.

There is a gentler walk here too. In 2021 the park opened Australia's first dementia friendly forest and sensory trail, a level kilometre off Elsworth Street East built for people who need an easy path and a quiet hour among the trees, and the Fern Loop and Cherry Ballart Loop add three more kilometres for a short morning. Echidnas and kangaroos are the regulars, and the birdlife is good all year. Clare Purcell, Parks Victoria's regional director, said success has many contributors and that was on full display at the birthday, and Jeff Rootes, president of the Friends of Canadian Corridor, the volunteers who campaigned for the park and still plant and weed it, was simply glad that Parks Victoria got the guernsey. Its next chapter is being drawn now: a central visitor site with picnic tables, accessible toilets, electric barbecues and links to the Loop and the sensory trail, designed with the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, the Friends and the City of Ballarat, with $500,000 from the state behind it. Comments on the design close on 14 September, and there is a pop up at the Ballarat Farmers Market on Saturday 12 September if you would rather talk than type. A park by the people, for the people, as its visitor guide says, and now with ten thousand more steps in it.

### Sources and links

Our short take: from Parks Victoria's news of 17 August 2026 on the park's tenth birthday and the new trail, with the walk details from Winnie Stubbs for Time Out (21 August 2026) and the Engage Victoria consultation page. No accommodation or operator is named, so no reputation check was needed. Photograph: David Clode, Unsplash.

- [Parks Victoria, celebrating ten years of Woowookarung](https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/news/2026/08/17/01/27/celebrating-10-years-of-woowookarung-regional-park)
- [Engage Victoria, have your say on the visitor site](https://engage.vic.gov.au/woowookarung)