I previously posted an introduction to our Light to light bushwalk. It is a 30 kilometre walk one way, with a lighthouse at either end. Obviously, you can walk in either direction. We started at the North end, which is Boyd's Tower and at the South end is Green Cape Lighthouse. On day 1 we walked from: Boyd's Tower to Saltwater Creek - Start 1:20pm, arrived at campsite at 6:20pm (elapsed 5 hrs) - 13k.
Our plan had been to walk for five days, four nights. In that time we would do: Boyd's tower to Saltwater, Saltwater to Bittangabee, stay at Bittangabee for another night, day trip to Green Cape Lighthouse, then Bittangabee back to Saltwater, then Saltwater back to our car at Boyd's Tower. In retrospect, it was quite an ambitious plan and we weren't up to it but we still did a creditable 35km round trip, four days, three nights. We saw some amazing landscapes, native animals and great wildflowers. We tested ourselves and learned a lot about ourselves and the children. Life is not linear and while it would be good to think we could just keep building on our walking experiences, last year we did a 4 day, 3 night walk so this year we should do a 5 day, 4 night, it just wasn't to be.
As we left Canberra it was chilly and raining and the forecast for the week was more rain. A few years ago, this would have been enough to have me cancel the trip or to re-design it into some comfortable hotel/motel/cabin experience. I think my husband's stoic nature has been slowly seeping into my consciousness (19 years of a relationship - could say I'm a slow learner). Anyway, we didn't cancel. We decided that if we were to be bushwalkers we would need to sometimes walk in the rain. I did feel nervous though as we drove down the coast in the pouring rain. Thankfully, as we got out of the car it stopped for long enough to gather our back packs and to set off in grey sky but no rain. The very first view on the walk reveals the red rock that was so intriguing to us. Before we started the walk we had heard about the red rock but had also heard different views on its origin. Was it volcanic or sedimentary? Was it from a vast inland river system that linked to Central Australia (think Uluru), or was it local (as in originating on the ancient coast of NSW)? Both sources acknowledged that it was iron ore in the rock that had coloured it red - in that way, the sources were in agreement. Either way, it was unusual to us and quite stunning.
The whole bushwalk over the 4 days saw us walking through a range of different terrains. Sometimes a covered, scrubby forest, open heathland, exposed heathland, rock platforms, beaches, meadows of wildflowers. It was interesting.
We famously start all our family bushwalks by stopping really early on the walk. There is documentary evidence of this and so, true to form, we stopped for lunch at the spot below and looked back at Boyd's Tower. There was a little rock platform that we sat out on, gathered a bit of sun on our skin, ate our lunch and then pressed on. The whole walk, for the four days, was a constant battle between grey clouds, drizzle, and sunny bright moments. Every day was a roller coaster of sharp blues and flat greys.
After leaving the enclosed bush you move out onto a kind of open bush coastal heathland which always amazes me. It is so dead and scrubby underneath and then just on the very top, it is a kind of fluorescent lime green. It actually is this colour - well, probably more lime greeny than this.
At this stage of our walk, we are still very much in the mode to look at everything. Flowers, trees, views, rocks, pebbles, seaweed - everything was catching our eye. If you like looking at nature but you've been living in suburbia it can be a bit of a flood of information when you first immerse yourself in a wild landscape.
After leaving the red rocky platforms and rocky beaches, we ascended back up to an exposed part of the heathland. The ground underfoot was reasonably sandy and soft. However, the rain decided to start up again and we put our raincoats on, heads down and tromped on through the cold rain.
Just after this next rocky beach, Tim sighted a sign which indicated that we still had a very long way to go. He became concerned about whether we would make the campsite by nightfall. We knew that it would be dark at about 7:20pm. And at the pace we were walking we probably wouldn't have made it. Something was going to need to change in order for us to make our destination.
We could probably have decided to cut short the first day and camp somewhere before Saltwater Creek but while Tim was a bit interested in this option, I favoured the idea of pressing on. Of the two of us, I'm always a bit single-minded about sticking to the plan, whereas Tim is always very flexible and happy to change things around. We discussed our options and I suggested he go on ahead and set up camp for us. I felt that there was no problem with making it to camp as long as we plodded along steadily but I thought it could be pretty miserable for us to roll in just before dark, all tired and sore and still have to make dinner, put up tents, find water, all that kind of thing.Tess and I were walking quite slowly and it seemed silly to hold everyone back at our pace. Unfortunately, at that point, we hadn't given Nick an opportunity to choose who he wanted to walk with and he kind of got stuck with us dawdlers. He wasn't very happy when he realised what had happened. However, it all worked out for the best, when only a short while later Tim came back to the three of us and suggested that he'd found a nice place for us to stay. It was only about 3pm, which seemed too early to stop and again...single-minded....so this time, he took Nick with him. They had the two tents and I was confident they'd make good time without us.
Soon after they left us, Tess and I climbed to the top of a headland and found this open pasture of nicely mown grass. It was full of mobs of kangaroos, who seemed almost reluctant to move. They waited until we were almost upon them before they hopped off. As a landscape, it surprised me. There were reasonably large expanses of open grass. I guess it surprised me because it looked kind of landscaped, almost purposeful and pleasant and relaxing. Less wild than the bush we had been walking through.
About a week after we were home, I came across a review of a recently published book.
Professor Bill Gammage from the Humanities Research Centre has recently released The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia.
The biggest estate on earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today.
Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year.
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage (Allen & Unwin, $49.99).
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This book sounds like a radical interpretation of Aboriginal land use. I'm very keen to read it. In the book review below, it mentioned how Bill Gammage had used many of the early accounts from settlers and from paintings to develop his theories about pre-contact Aboriginal land use. Australia is a very difficult environment in which to sustain western style agriculture. The soils are ancient and impoverished for market gardening or broad-scale agricultural needs. It is also a highly flammable environment with massively destructive bushfires (just think of the 2009 Victorian bushfires, and the 2003 Canberra bushfires - loss of lives, loss of property). I am interested to read some theories on how it might be managed differently (either by interpreting the past, or by thinking of the future).
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Meanwhile, back on the bushwalk, after leaving Mowarry Point and the open grasslands, we descended back down to rock platforms and rocky beaches. The sun briefly illuminated a small island off the cliff. We were both feeling quite tired by this point and at one stage, scrabbling over the rocky beaches, I became nervous about the heavy pack on my back. I took it very slowly over some of the slippery rocks. Tess was being a complete trooper through all of this. She understood that we needed to keep up a steady pace in order to make the camp and she never complained. True. When we felt tired we'd rest and talk about how Dad and Nick would have the tents up and dinner cooking. We wouldn't need to do anything, except make it to camp. It was probably about 5:30pm at this stage. The sky was growing quite dull, we were wet from the rain, and the wind was cold.
I knew Tim would set up tents, get dinner organised and then walk out to meet us, so that he could relieve Tess of her pack and help guide us into camp. At about 6pm we saw a bright red shirt approaching us through the bush. There was Tim. At this stage, I was carrying my pack on my back and Tessy's pack on my front. She had been a complete champion but when she lay down on one of our rest breaks and I thought she was going to fall asleep, I offered to carry her pack so she could keep going. All up, I carried it for about half an hour. Needless to say - very relieved when the Cavalry arrived and took her pack off me.
So, photo below is Saltwater Creek at about 6:20pm - our destination. The campsite is a hard right, across a lagoon and up a set of steps. This campsite has car access and it was pretty full, being a long weekend in Canberra. It felt kind of odd to be the only bushwalkers in the campsite. All that hard slog and everyone else just drove in with campervans and chairs and tables. Someone blared out some Country music for a couple of songs before going quiet again. It all seemed so incongruous.
That night, while eating dinner, we had a Kangaroo grab a bag of weetbix from our campsite and when Tim went up to him to get it back, the Kangaroo growled at him. It was so funny we weren't frightened but in retrospect - they are wild animals, and perhaps under different circumstances it might have done more than growled.
As it was, a possum also went into our tent while we were having dinner and grabbed a bag of hot chocolate powder. Again, Tim needed to chase it down and make it hand over our food. He said later, he wasn't sure he was going to catch up to the possum. Later that night, while sleeping fitfully (as you do - the ground is hard after all) we could hear the possums in our tent vestibule sniffing and scrabling around our packs. Everything was zipped and strapped and sealed away. It seemed that we had multiple visitations in the night.
Before retiring to our tents, we noticed a little bandicoot at the edge of our campsite. Over the period of the four days we saw lots of evidence of their nocturnal feeding. They dig up the sandy soil around certain trees searching for truffle-like fungal growths. You could tell when they had struck it lucky because they left behind lots of largish holes. There were also some quite small scrapings where they hadn't been so lucky. The return of the bandicoots is a success story of the parks - courtesy of the trappings and baitings of the foxes and dogs.
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Green Thumb Sunday # 20 - Light to light walk - Introduction
