South Oz (pt 3)

The plan was to walk the last four days of the mammoth Heysen Trail, walking north from Wilpena Pound to Parachilna Gorge. Ella, Jacques and I hit the trail on foot with ample supplies of 'pocket cake', whilst Helen took the 'support vehicle' on enjoyable drives during the days and met us each evening (with more cake) at campsites which were fortunately accessible by 4WD. This gave us walkers the opportunity to walk with relatively light packs, not needing all the camping equipment ... which we replaced with medicinal portions of cake.



The going was really fairly flat, and considerably less tricky than the rock-hopping we got used to in Tassie. We covered decent distances, and ended up doing the four scheduled days in three instead.



The scenery was very interesting - there were lots of ridges surrounding us and scores of dry river beds that we often walked along.





Dumb and dumber!





The temperature was fairly cool, and there were a few rain showers, but generally speaking it was good walking conditions. Not so good for the local Kangaroo / Wallaby populations though, as we saw lots of dead ones along the way.



Despite the arid landscape there were some truly immense trees. Some of the dried up rivers were massive, (I'd love to see some of these rivers in full flow) but it was in these that the largest trees were found. In this photo you can see Jacques at the base of the tree showing how big it is.


Some of the great geology on offer in the Flinder's Ranges.


It was a great walk, and we didn't even feel that tired after three days walking ... thanks in no small part to Helen for driving and meeting us at the end of each day, and the cake she'd provided. And here she is, trying to keep warm as we finished the walk!


All good fun and the holiday was only just beginning. We were heading north, to the desert to experience frozen tents, more campfires ... and to eat much more cake (to keep us warm of course).

South Oz (pt 2)

I said 'towards' The Alice, not to the Alice!

We drove north out of Adelaide and headed to the Clare Valley. It seems like every spare patch of ground in SA is cultivated with grape vines and Clare Valley is one of the famous wine areas. We weren't there to see the vineyards, but I did want to check out the winemaker Knappstein, who also brew an interesting lager. More on that later...

From Clare we veered north-west to get to Mount Remarkable National Park, passing through the kind of green pastures we're supposed to call "rolling". I didn't see much rolling, but there was a nice lazy feel about the area, and a beautiful golden sunset:


We camped at Mt Remarkable National Park for the night and woke to see Emus wandering around the site. We saw a lot more of them on our trip...

There was a particularly friendly young Kookaburra too.

After a walk to Sugargum lookout we hopped in the car and drove up to Port Augusta to get some provisions, then on towards Wilpena at Flinders Range National Park. We had arranged to meet Helen and Jacques who were adventuring their way down from Queensland via the dirt roads in their desert cruising Navarra.

Progress wasn't quick though as Ella wanted to get shots of the landscape as it changed from farmland into a kind of liminal desert scrub.


After a night with H&J we got motivated for a good long walk - a welcome bit of exercise after a lot of driving (see the map at the bottom to see our progress so far).

Our first walk was to the summit of mighty St Mary Peak - 1170m. This turned into a really nice day's walking.

The peak is part of the range that forms a ring, or 'pound' known as Wilpena Pound - a truly impressive and unusual geological form. After walking up to the peak from the outside of the perimeter range we went down into the pound and across its centre back to the camp site. You might be able to see the path we took down in the second photo.




It would have been impossible to not notice how spectacular the hardy trees were in this gnarly country. Although winter is supposed to be relatively wet, it was extremely dry; we were coming across river beds dry as dust but wide to suggest torrents flow when it does rain. This tree truly did shimmer silver in the winter sun!


A wife in a tree!


That was a good opening walk to get us started, we were to see a lot more stunning SA scenery in the coming days.



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South Oz (pt 1)

Wow! Three months later and it's all change for the Reeks's. We've had a crazy time - Ella got a job in Melbourne (well Canberra, but we opted to live in Melbourne instead) and we packed up and went off on a wonderful three-week holiday in the Triumph...

I must say I'm sad to leave Tasmania - as you'll have gathered from these posts I got quite attached to the place and the people. It feels quite special to be living almost at the bottom of the inhabitted world, and to leave an overgrown country town to come and live in a city of almost 4 million people isn't exactly easy, but we've made a determined decision to enjoy Melborne for what it is.

But you're probably more interested in our holiday! We packed up the house, sent our belongings into storage, packed up the car with all our camping gear and drove to the ferry terminal at Devonport for the overnight voyage to Melbourne. After a weekend flat-hunting we found a good place in the suburb of Elwood, and were able to get out of the city to enjoy ourselves. Hurrah!

The first destination was Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. It's roughly 800km (500 miles) west of Melbourne - a long day's drive, but we spread it over an afternoon and a morning. We stopped for the night at Mount Arapiles, Australia's rock-climbing Mecca. You can see why:


As soon as we were out of Melbourne Ella had commented on the way the landscape was so clearly "mainland". There's something about the flatness that reveals the difference in the geological age of the land - it's strange that a lack of obvious features can do this.

But the further west we travelled the more things changed and on the second day we were heading through unusual (for me) verdant pastoral land that looked almost like English Country House Parkland ... but with ancient Eucalypts instead of Oaks. And then we were driving down tree-lined roads reminiscent of northern France, but rather than Poplars there were Eucalypts again.


Suddenly we arrived at Adelaide, home to three-quarters of South Australia's population. Still this planned city feels rather intimate, we were able to find a lunch-time parking space extremely easily and marvel at the locals ignoring red traffic lights - how very continental!

We spent the night with a friend I'd met through the Triumph scene drinking his tasty homebrew, which set us up with good hangovers for our drive north towards Alice Springs the next day...

Mt. Field ... again!

Yes ... again! We just can't stay away from the National Park, can we?

Ella's sister, Jana, was visiting last week, so we had to take her camping at Mt Field in order to spring a surprise trip on her to watch a stage of Targa Tasmania (which I've written about on my other blog).

We rushed up on Saturday afternoon, and wanted to get a good length walk in over the Tarn Shelf to get the best views of the unique Deciduous Beech that's found in Tassie (read about it here). However we just didn't make it in time, so only managed a shorter walk ... but there were some spectacular views as the weather was perfect!

So I'll just leave you with some shots of the views.

Easter NSW Parks Tour!

As autumn bites in Hobart in March a trip back to the mainland was scheduled to enjoy a little sunshine. We only had a week but thought that New South Wales could be fun. There are several National Parks close to the north of Sydney so we planned to check some of these out. I think we've been lulled into complacency in Tasmania... we can camp anywhere on the island at a National Park regardless of time of year and it seems to be quiet. A few hours north of Sydney on an Easter weekend seems to be a quite different proposition though. After a couple of nights in a really busy campsite however we ended up finding a truly breathtaking secluded spot.

First up though was a night with friends of the Rohens' - Sandy and Doug. They very kindly put us up at their place in North Sydney and provided an excellent barbeque the night before Good Friday. On Good Friday we did a long drive up towards Singleton and then west towards Merriwa before heading south to Rylstone and in to camp on the western edge of Wollomi National Park, at the ominously named "Dunn's Swamp". It was actually a great spot, but extremely busy. We managed to find a spot to camp ... just.


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Here's the swamp:


On the Saturday we attempted to do a walk to the summit of Mount Coricudgy - not a particularly difficult or daunting walk, but it wasn't exactly marked and we wandered through the forest trails in the mist for a fair few hours but never quite found it!


On Sunday we made a move to find some more walks and some quieter camping. We drove down to a place called Mountain Lagoon (see the map below)

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We packed our rucksacks for an overnight trip, walking into a campsite on one of the bends on the Colo River near-ish to Upper Colo. This turned out to be quite a challenging walk, but it was really worth the effort. First of all we saw a Koala ... only the second one I've ever seen in the wild, and probably the most regal looking animal I've ever seen. "Hello down there ground dweller".


Then we marched up a 4wd track onto a ridge and through fantastic forest with all kinds of different Eucalypts.


The views of the river from the ridge were excellent as you can see.

But when we eventually got down to the river we had the entire place to ourselves, and ended up camping on he beach right next to the river... absolutely idyllic!


If we'd known it was going to be as nice as this then we probably would have brought more food and spent a day lounging by the river. Instead we stayed as late as we could, putting off the steep climb back out. Unfortunately this meant it was hot by the time we left making the climb out a bit harder...

But we took it slow enough to smell the flowers at least, and there were lots of beautiful native plants to admire.






We were pretty much puffed out by the time we got back to the car, but we had to head off and find somewhere else to spend the night. There's an interesting system of ferries to cross many of the larger rivers and a place at the confluence of several rivers called Wiseman's Ferry ... this is the mother of the Hawkesbury ferries area. We stopped here for dinner at the pub before heading north across the river through St Albans.

It was dark by the time we got to St Albans, which looked really nice, but we had to get through to our campsite at Mogo Creek.

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The drive up was all dirt road, great fun to drive and only one kangaroo that we had to brake for! The Mogo Creek area is an interesting spot from a historical perspective, as the Old Great North Road was built through here ... 'Old' because it never really got used. Settlements developed elsewhere and alternative routes were taken to head north out of Sydney. There were some old bridge structures that we had a little look at on a walk the next day.


We spent a couple of nights at Mogo Creek ... another quieter spot, and managed to keep dry-ish despite the storms we had both nights.


On our final day we drove east out to the coast through more National Parks, then back down the highway to Sydney. It was a lovely warm 28 degrees in Sydney ... but when we got off the plane in Hobart a couple of hours later it was just 10 degrees - Brrrr!

How tall can a tree fern grow?

Apparently they grow up to 10 metres in the northeast of Tasmania. Sometimes they look a bit like animals and you can ride them, too!


The weekend before last Ella and I drove up to the northeast see Anita, who was visiting from Queensland. Anita was down to spend a week walking a new track with some of 'The Friends of the Blue Tier'. The Blue Tier is one of the few remaining areas of wild forest in Tasmania’s North-East, and one of Tasmania’s most controversial forest flashpoints in the state-wide debate over logging. The Friends have been trying to generate publicity about the area by developing the through-walk and linking up a number of forest reserves to create a new national park. This way they hope to get some of the forest protected.

We drove up on Saturday morning taking the scenic route and visiting Evercreech forest reserve. There we saw the rather impressive White Knight trees, and very large they were:


We drove on the maze of forestry roads to get to Pyengana ... although not exactly directly as we got a bit lost, and made it to Leslie's house where Anita was waiting. They took us up to a great camping spot for the night, from where we could see much of the northeast highlands:

It is quite sad to think that nearly all of this is reserved for forestry. But the next day we got to take a stroll through the old growth forests that make the Blue Tier so special, and the thought that on a whim the whole area can be destroyed to make paper made me more angry than sad. They get about $15/tonne of tree apparently! This 600 year old tree is protected with a 40m zone around it. I'm sure it would really last a long time if they clearfelled the surrounding areas!


We had lunch by a stream and stopped off at the Cradle Tree on the way back to the car, before the four hour drive back to Hobart:





It was another cracking weekend, and particularly good to see some of a lesser known part of Tassie.