Alicia Corbett Ashley Burke Cameron Schmelitschek Daniel Ryan Elva Cha Ãve Vautier Jennifer Burnett Kim Corrans Laura Ashton-Ross Marcelle Gannon Martine Bardy Matthew Noone Meena David Meredith Dodds Nicole St Vincent Welch Pete Harvey Philipp Vorderwuelbecke Silke Walleser Yip Chung (Rita)
The weather wasn’t looking fantastic for this Anzac Day ride along the Oaks trail from Woodford to Glenbrook. We started at Glenbrook, where we squeezed onto the 8:23 am train along with 10-15 other mountain biker. We arrived at Woodford just before 9:00. It was overcast but fortunately it wasn’t raining. After a few hundred metres of bitumen riding we reached the start of the Oaks trail. The recent rain which had soaked the city meant the trail was wet, muddy and slippery.
Alicia Corbett, Megan Higgins and I had planned an adventurous route to take in Hannel’s Spur, The Geehi, Townsend Spur, Lady Northcote’s Creek and Watson’s Crags Spur over five days. We had an amazing trip, especially me, (literally) who tripped near Moira’s Flat and tore a lateral ankle ligament on my left foot. This injury forced us to turn back and overshadowed much of the rest of the trip as we limped slowly home. Thanks to Megan, an almost doctor, and to Alicia for helping me to make the decision to pull out. It was one of the hardest decisions of my bushwalking life. As a result my recovery time will be much shorter than it probably would have been had we have pushed on (regardless).
Deua National Park is a large area of rugged mountain country along the Great Dividing Range southeast of Canberra. Steep quartzite ridges, beautiful stands of eucalypts and pristine creeks and streams are some of its key attractions. The above party of 7 spent the four day Easter long weekend completing a circuit through some of the most spectacular parts of this National Park.
This feels like it was probably one of those walks that was planned enthusiastically after a few jugs at a Canoe Club slide night. I do seem to recall something about us all taking a blood oath to ward away the evil piking spirits, but then Wilmo snapped his arm off at the canyoning weekend (or bruised his hand, or something) so clearly something thicker than blood will be required next time.
From the conservation hut we descended down past empress falls and onto the Vera falls track (no longer officially maintained, and therefore declared closed) until we reached the turnoff to Roberts pass. The track led us through areas of moist undergrowth and occasional unavoidable pools of mud. As one may suspect in these conditions, our group soon came under the attack of blood hungry leeches.
It started out, as these things tend to, at around sunrise on a Saturday morning. Once we had worked out what gear people needed to borrow and had it in their hot little hands it was time to send up an advance party to do Twister and Rocky Creek. With 5 people out of the way it was time to divvy up everyone else into cars. This proved to be a little more challenging that one would have hoped for, so we had to call in the reserve forces (much thanks to Jiri for taking his car up). Now we had this all under control it was time to head out.
Attendees: Lachlan Toohey, Thomas Roberts, James Sterney, Nelson Velazquez, Talitha Roberts, Kimvi Le, Daniel Ryan, Laura Ashton-Ross, Kim Corrans, James Griffin, Louise Kolff, Kike Gray, Kris Plain, Simon Lodowyk, Patrick Miller, Craig Wilmo plus many more. With a special thanks to Tom M, Dave L, James B, Peter H, Jackie for all the help with making it such a smooth day.
We all gathered together at Cronulla Station at 9:20am Saturday morning and was about to catch the 9:30 ferry to Bundeena. However, Sang had to find a proper place to leave his car, so half of us missed the ferry. We just relaxed under the sun by the wharf and waited for the next ferry. An hour later, we met up with the others at a cafe in Bundeena, and were informed that while they were waiting for us, they had consumed all the coffee in the cafe Amazing!
Marley Beach is 2hours walk south of Bundeena along the Coast Track [Topo 1:25000 PORT HACKING]. Big Marley also has a lagoon and large sand dunes behind the beach that frequently have rubbish left around them from park visitors. In addition to this, a lot of rubbish gets washed up on the beach that has been thrown off boats offshore. This project is important to preserve the sand dunes for nesting birds such as Terns or Dotterels and it is also important to protect the lagoon from pollution and the general area as it is recognised as an Aboriginal Site, once of the Dharawal Clan.