We were greeted to a beautiful sunny winter's day as we arrived in Warburton (elevation 159m) just before lunchtime and parked our car beside the Yarra River near the town centre.

My sister and I commenced our hike across the swing bridge and headed up Wellington Street and to the corner of Martyr Rd (an appropriately named street as its famous for its short steep climb with an average gradient of 19%, and some sections nearly 30%).

We commenced our hike along the trail and soon realised it was going to be a long slow climb up to Mt Donna Buang with mud soon caked to the bottom of our boots. We followed the fence line of a neighbouring paddock and up across over the O'Shannassy Aqueduct trail, where you would see evidence of local deer tearing up the trail. Despite the sunshine it was quite windy yet peaceful along the trail, as we only saw 5 other hikers on the ascend.

After about 6km we crossed the main road and the trail opened up onto a main fire track and much flatter elevation up towards Mt Donna Buang. We took a short lunch break at Mt Victoria (1100m elevation). It was very picturesque scenery as we walked between the beautiful mountain ash trees and yet eerie when the low cloud rolled in.

There was small amounts of scattered snow from recent snow falls.

A short distance further, we arrived the top of Mt Donna Buang (elevation 1252m) to high winds and climbed up the viewing deck for very extensive view of the Yarra Valley. :)

A couple of kids made the best of the limited snow!

After a few minutes at the top, we started to head back down to get out of the wind chill.

We quickly descended the first section back to crossover the main road, then the fun began! The mud and debris under foot made it very difficult to get traction with our boots as we descended, it was a great benefit to have my hiking poles but despite the poles i took a couple of stacks on the way down.

It was now heading towards dusk which made the conditions a bit more tricky, but we were prepared for the conditions, so put our head torches on and continue down the remaining few kilometres.

We were excited to see the lights of Warburton, with an extra surprise, a river light lantern festival was happening on that Saturday night which capped off a great day of hiking.

All up we hiked about 20km over just under 6.5 hours, with a lunch stop and short break at Mt Donna Buang summit. I imagine in better conditions under foot would be a 5-6hr day hike .

Food tip
Try one of the great pizzas at Little Joe's in Warburton. It was a great place for dinner after the hike.