Temperate Forest Love in Victoria

You know, I think life is crazy.  So many horrors going on in the world.  Then there’s our rat race – the money’s good, but work seems all-consuming and so people’s identities get wrapped up in their line of work.  We’re constantly bombarded with messages to buy or join in on things we don’t need or like.  Closer to home for me, well, work is not easy plus I’m learning to cope with anxiety around rockclimbing and the importance of enjoying it – everyone will have their personal problems.

So thank God there’s an Otways.  Parks Victoria and beyondblue should get together and have a little dance.  In reasonable road-trip distance from Adelaide there are tall tree cool temperate forests that enliven the senses, especially in spring.

Thursday seemed to be dog people day.  They were well behaved while I hiked alongside Lake Elizabeth and to Stevensons Falls, enjoying my solitude and watching birds and butterflies, loving the damp green scents of the forest.  Meanwhile Dan was getting to know the dedicated mountain bike trails.  While I stared at the falls, what looked like swarms of tiny flies lit by the sun turned out to be fine water droplets carried a good 30-or-so metres from the falls.  When they hit my face I had that rain-shower forest scent all over again.

On Wednesday Dan and I visited the Otway Fly, the longest and highest treetop suspended walk of its kind, they say.  The Spiral Tower is 47 metres and the trees were a bit higher, and I learned that the Mountain Ash eucalypt can grow to 100 metres.  We felt the tower sway, and later on walkway I stared amazed at a mighty trunk and could’ve sworn the whole thing swayed in the wind gusts.  Also some Otway Fly time was well worth the moments of looking between my feet at the forest floor, or just draping my arms and chin over the railing, wondering about it all.

These forests have to be the most tree-fern-dense I’ve ever walked among.  Some sections are officially rainforests, and while the old-growth logging was people’s livelihoods before the plantation thing started, I’m so glad that what remains in this area is extensive and protected.  Having said that, I’m excited to learn the Wilderness Society has a campaign for the proposed Great Forest National Park, north-east of Melbourne.  Back in the Otways, Melba Gully will blow your mind (if you’re ga-ga about wild places as I am).  It has among the highest levels of rainfall in Victoria at over 2,000mm a year.  One day I’m going to overnight nearby, because you can go back after dark and check out the glow worms on the forest floor.  Anyway, strolling among the Myrtle Beech giants, ferns, fungi and epiphytes, mossy rocks and babbling streams, lifted the cares of the world off my shoulders.  Triplet Falls and Little Aire Walks also played their part in the forest love and the de-stressing – the cascades of the Triplet Falls are enormous!  Thank you very much.

 Melba Gully

Awesome Otway Fly treetop walk

Tree admiration, Little Aire Walk

Nearby lovable places

Finally I got to Tower Hill Reserve, near Warrnambool.  This reserve was reclaimed for revegetation in the 1950s, with an old 1855 painting of the Hill to guide the project.  It’s a ‘nested maar’ extinct volcano landscape of lakes and conical hills.  Driving up to it from the highway, it was a nondescript hill, but drive over the ridge and you enter this verdant setting with lakes and land bridges leading visitors into the heart of the reserve.  Dan and I did the peak climb, then the Journey to the Last Volcano loop, both around half an hour in duration.  The crater pool was dark, deep and lush, not that you can hike down to it.  The high ground reveals ridges of craters, lakes and the sea beyond, in one vista.  Near the visitor centre we gave way to emus and their chicks – the centre is an impressive stone circular building and run by the Worn Gundidj Aboriginal Cooperative.  

 Tower Hill Reserve

The Twelve Apostles are awesome.  These coastal limestone stacks are iconic and up-there on a national tourism scale.  They make me ask if they are one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.  They’re not, but the Great Barrier Reef is, so that’s OK.  I’m proud of my Graduate Diploma of Australian Tourism from Monash University and in a parallel universe I would have been an ecotourism manager, but that’s another story.  At the Twelve Apostles, I was just happy to see wide paths and viewing platforms in different places for people from all walks of life and fitness levels to enjoy.  People love it.  

Dan and I went to Loch Ard Gorge too.  Geez it was bloody hot for October – the opposite of what I experienced six months earlier!  The story of the Loch Ard Gorge shipwreck in 1878 was terrifying.  Some visitors swam but despite my passion for nature, swimming was off the menu for me.  The water was too cold, and officially not recommended probably because of the undertows, so instead I relished pockets of shade near the caves, watching birds fly in and out of the sea walls, which was ten times gentler.

I could tell you about Natimuk and my very dear friends there, some great rockclimbing at Arapiles, and then about my shiny new Subaru dramatically breaking down on the homeward journey, near Murray Bridge (then getting towed home).  But I’ll leave those parts out, because I am frankly biased about the forests, coastlines and crater hills.  Life is less crazy for our delightful natural landscapes.

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Kakadu

I’m thrilled to share this story from my first guest contributor and dear friend Wendy Eden. It’s a long and delicious read, full of out-there Kakadu escarpment terrain and birds. Enjoy!

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The road into Maguk is a 4WD road, but we were saved from slogging down a dusty road in the midday heat by a recent resurfacing such that a mini could have driven in. We had done the first part of our walk in 2013, before I came out in an appalling rash that sent us running for Jabiru hospital, so we hightailed straight to a creek laden with waterfalls we had barely been able to give a second glance in our hurried departure.

Walking up north really is all about finding the perfect campsite and swimming hole, but there's a lot of competition. By day 2, we were settled in a cosy camp well-endowed with shade, a swimming hole and flat sand. This one could only have been made better by being 200m downstream, where it would have view over a series of falls, plus camp-side bouldering.  The first falls formed a deep, oval pool, made for deep water soloing if you are into the extra excitement of not only knowing you are going to fall off, but that you'll be taking a quick dip into cold water. Douglas bouldered around the pool then we scrambled down the next cascade to swim across another pool where the falls dropped a narrow gorge we were unable to get down. This disappeared around a bend to another fall that descended to the huge pool where we had stopped for lunch.

 Nutella dampers at Camp 1

Plunge pool below Camp 2

Nakedman goes bouldering

 Amazing rock architecture and waterways like this are one of the glories of Kakadu. The next day we day-hiked to falls marked on a nearby creek, to discover the creek disappears into a smooth, dark chasm which we could not get into, or even see into the middle of it, for all our scrambling.  Further downstream, the creek disappeared into a hole only to reappear in a pool below. I saw a green tree snake by the pool, but the funny thing about green tree snakes up here is they are actually yellow! Douglas was excited to see northern rosellas, which are also a little bizarre, being rather like black and white versions of their southern cousins. Then we spotted a night heron looking strangely like a penguin perched in a tropical tree.

From this camp we had to cross over to the next catchment through rocky country.  This country is very varied, from clear rock slabs to saunter across, mini gibber plains or thick grass covered ankle snapping boulders. Other times it is a mini canyonland, with micro valleys and pillars everywhere. You never know which you are getting into from the map or how long it might take to cross.  Getting through overgrown country full of ankle snappy boulders or scrambling around rocky pillars covered in spinifex can be a painful day indeed.

You do know it will be hot, however, away from shade and water, so an early start is good. This crossing had a little bit of everything, as we passed through the herd of elephant boulders, had a snack in the shade of the tottering penises and admired the dinosaur back in the distance. It's a very spectacular, but a harsh and rugged landscape. Finding water in the next catchment is always a relief and we settled into the first available campsite, scrambling up high to catch the sunset only to realise would be another hour and were too impatient to wait.

It was over the top again the next day and down, down, down, all the way to the base of the escarpment. I scared some quails and they scared me, shooting out of the grass like rockets just ahead of me, then we disturbed three frogmouths who had been peacefully sleeping on the ground. Once down, it was pretty flat country to join our next creek up, but instead of the cruisy ride we had hoped for, it was thickly vegetated, and being just below rock country, covered in ankle snapping boulders. We could battle the shady flood areas near the creek - convoluted with overflow channels, buffalo wallows, spiky pandanus, soft sand, fresh weeds and grasses and suspiciously close to croc country, or brave the boulders buried in Wendy-high dry spear grass and a gazillion young acacias, useless for shade but great at getting in the way. Thus it turned into a long, tedious trudge to our creek, which happily chirpled over some pretty little cascades in patches of rainforest clear of the junk littering the larger creek.

By this time, Douglas was so tired, he tried to take a photo with the EPIRB.  We headed on up the creek keen for a campsite and hit another pool beneath cascades. Then another, this one plummeting into a hole with no surface connection to the next pool. Douglas dived down looking for the underground connection, but could see no light, nor even feel a current.

From the top of these falls, we discovered a 200m rock waterslide. All the way to the next bend in the creek was a broad band of polished rock, liberally decorated with falls, pools and bits that really did tempt you to try the slide out, but we weren't sure our buttocks would really appreciate it. Camp was found by the next pool and we spent a rest day trying out the myriad swimming options in our giant waterslide. Douglas spotted a large bee disappearing into a hole in a tree. It soon popped out again, shovelling a tiny load of saw dust. On investigation, he found several holes in the tree and a pile of saw dust at the base evidencing their industry. A tiny lizard ran into one, so maybe there were tasty larvae inside?

One of many pools in the 200m waterslide

Lizard in the carpenter bee hole

The next 3km will go down as the slowest I have ever travelled in my life. Fortunately, it was gorgeous. We climbed past the waterslides and into the first of many gorges. It was narrow with limited options to scramble between water and steep walls. We waterproofed up the packs in case we fell in whilst scrambling, so the camera was buried for most of the day and the beauty shall have to remain in our memories. We got through the first section and climbed over and around rocks and pandanus through a wider section where we encountered a group descending. Quite unexpected this far from the car. They said they camped at the top falls and had been walking for about 2 hours, but they'd cut some corners off creek, which they didn't recommend they had been blocked by cliffs and getting down again difficult.  We continued on, easily along some rocky ledges then more narrow gorges where we'd start on one side, back track, up the other. Scramble up, down, think about swimming, pass packs and make it through. 2 hours went by. We were still a long way from the top falls. Surely they missed all this going over the top? We can't be slower than a group of 8. At the next blockage, I give up and jump in the water. I'm waiting at the end when Douglas calls out for me to come back and help him with his pack.  I stand in the water and hold his pack whilst he boulders across and hand it back to him. Maybe jumping in the water is just the quickest way forward. Actually, going over the top must definitely be the quickest way. Sad that they had missed all this beauty though.

You scare a lot of frogs walking along the creeks. They take a flying leap into the safety of water, sometimes a very impressive 5m or so and a sudden dash of water immediately in front of me regularly made me jump. Occasionally, they miscalculated, and a small cold, wet slimy thing would thump into you.

Another break in the ultra slow creek

Camp above ultra slow creek

The creek opened out again and we moved quicker, coming to a big pool with falls and wonder if we have come far enough for this to be it? Much digging through the waterproofed pack later, no. It's not marked at all. We're resigned to this 3km taking the whole day now, so we have a swim, explore a cave, find some Indigenous art and potter along again. Another pool with double falls over rich burgundy rock tempts us to camp there. It's one of the hardest parts about walking in Kakadu, resisting the urge to swim or camp in each available bit of paradise. It's like taking a short stroll between tropical resorts you have all to yourself.  We have another 500m to go to the top falls and want an early start over the plateau tomorrow, so after another swim, we continue on, passing some more art and contemplating how they manage to paint lying down on a roof above them. At the top, the smell of smoke hits us and to the east is hazy. The thought of fire out bush is nerve-racking, but we were in lightly vegetated country, by a pool surrounded by bare rock, so we settled in for the night with striking views and a smoke enhanced sunset.

Next morning the smoke had dissipated and we had an easy crossing of mostly open woodland on smooth dirt. Drying out sundews testified to how recently it had been wet. One of the things I love about dry season walking in northern Australia is traveling light – no need for warm clothes, wet weather gear, stoves or fuel. Just a tent inner or mozzie net, some matches and 2 billies. A fleece blankie and because I'm cold frog, a jacket. However, it had dumped 30mm in Jabiru last Friday, nearly 3 times the June record rainfall. Getting caught out in that didn't sound so great. We sighed and packed the tent fly.

We hit the creek flowing nicely and trundled down to the falls. Sometimes I think cartographers are blind, or just playing a joke on us. Loads of notable falls are never marked, whilst they note plenty of littlish ones and then, wham, here's a 100m one. A chestnut-quilled rock pigeon flapped off in notable pigeon fashion. A fairly plain looking pigeon whilst wandering around as they do, when it takes flight, it displays beautiful rich brown feathers. Douglas had a little twitch.

Top of unnamed massive falls

Sadly, the site didn't offer great camping, with angled slabs and shallow pools, so we headed the next km over to another fall, passing a small monitor which stayed completely still as I approached. I could see a few ants around it and I wondered if it was dead until at the last moment, it made a mad dash out of there. This creek had a lovely pool, then entered a narrow gorge which we swam through to get to the lip of another massive drop.

We made camp in the little gorge, had tea, damper, lounged around reading and were going for our 4th or 5th swim when Douglas said, "There's a green tree snake".

"Fuck, I don't think that's a green tree snake!" It was more grey brown than yellow, with a dark head. I was not sharing less than 10 square metres of rock shelf penned in by water and cliff with a snake that might get a bit antsy faced with no way out past us. So the snake chased us out of paradise and we resettled by the upper pool.

The next day was going to be a short one. All we had to do was get to the base of the falls. Ok, so it looked a little steep, but there was a line weaving down them. We walked out to the tip of the peninsula, admired the view off the escarpment, eyed off where we were heading over the next 2 days, then cut back on a steep vegetated slope angling down between the upper and lower cliffs. The going was Ok until it became scree. Then steeper scree. Steep, vegetated scree decorated with the most enormous orb spiders you have ever seen. OK, so I have seen equally enormous ones in other rocky, rainforest gorges in Kakadu and they gave me the heebie-jeebies then too.  Douglas walked in a web, threw off his pack and yelled at me to wait as he probably had a large, irate spider on him. Fortunately not.

Giant orb spider

Base of the falls after braving the massive spiders

We boulderhopped back up the creek to the falls and spied one of the few decent looking lines to climb in all the abundant rock in Kakadu. A striking corner almost devoid of vegetation ran up right of the falls. Not that there was any way I was carting my gear in here. Mostly the rock has a lovely rough sandstone texture, forms beautiful rounded features and is very prone to breaking off and covered in spinifex. All in all, not so inviting to climb. Multiple falls must hurtle into this dark, round pool in the wet, with steep walls almost surrounding it. As usual, a quick glance above one’s head finds the line of debris that demonstrates just how much water comes down.

The map showed another 80m drop over the next 100m so we continued on, soon to find a small fall dropping into a gorge. Only the right side was supposed to have cliffs on it. What drunk cartographer missed the left cliff? Peering over the edge, it might have been possible to scramble down low enough to toss packs into the water, jump in and swim, but that's kinda committing when you don't know what's coming up. There would be no climbing back up.  So we skirted the top of the imaginary left cliff, figuring the steep contours suggested the cliff should come to an end soon and we'd be able to walk down.

After some horrible scrubby steep scree with only a few scrabbly trees between us and the drop, our slope plateaued out for a bit. Ah, the cartographer had got something right. Closer investigation discovered broken, but still undeniably cliff-like cliffs blocking our way down. The gorge from the other falls joined this one shortly and we could surely get down the ridge at the junction. Until we find ourselves at the top of something more like an arête than a ridge. Douglas looks at the map and suggests we regained a bit of height, maybe we were at the top of the cliffs marked at the edge of the escarpment. But the GPS is showing we are at 170m and the escarpment is 230m, so there's some other cliff above us marked and these ones must have formed in the violent land changing interval of the last 40 years since the maps were printed.

We weren't getting down. We had about a mouthful of water left and here we were stuck with the option of retreating all the crap we had done or finding a way to the top. From there we could make for the not-so-great-but-looking-really-good-right-now potential camp site at the top of the first big falls.  Downing our last water, we slogged up until a pitiful little 10m high cliffline appeared.  Really, they marked that but not the 25m ones blocking our way below? A quick scout found a gully to ascend and we topped out with relief.

Whilst dehydrating food for the trip, I'd made a Moroccan chickpea and pumpkin dish. The pumpkins in my garden this year looked amazing, but turned out to be completely tasteless. Hence, the Moroccan pumpkin was rather bland. To add to my failures,  I hadn't made enough, so I bagged  it up and labelled it "emergency bland meal", extra food for if we got stuck out. After our epic non-descent, we were pretty hungry again and I looked at Douglas, "Do you think it's an emergency?" "Oh yes, definitely, an emergency".  Emergency Bland Meal tasted pretty good right then.

This experience left us nervous about getting off the escarpment. We'd lost a day off our schedule and still had to drop 150m with almost continuous cliffline that may or may not be as marked on the map. We crossed back over the plateau to a less rugged area in a direct line with our exit creek on the other side. Crossing proved quick and the first creek we hit looked promising. We dropped 60m of easy scrambling in the dry bed before the contours eased out and we sighed with relief that we wouldn't have to reascend. We crossed the potentially croccy creek at a shallow rapid and ascended sufficiently up the new creek to feel safe before making camp.

Are you starting to feel this all goes on forever? That was how we were starting to feel too. We were tired. Douglas' back hurt. I'd come out in a patch of that bloody rash again. We were daydreaming of Darwin markets with fruit smoothies and sticky rice parcels.  Hell, we were even salivating over getting a barra burger at some dodgy tourist park in Pine Creek.

Still, we are nothing if not slightly soft, so I slapped some hardcore cortisone cream on the rash, Douglas downed a bunch of drugs, I shouldered the remaining food and we slogged on.  We'd camped low on the creek because it did some impressive zags through rugged country and we didn't think there be any camping options, but we found multiple sand banks by beautiful pools and were amazed to see sooty grunter this far up. Still, big fish feed crocs ... Surely we were too far up for crocs? What would a croc be doing in clear rockpools? They must be the lucky grunters, above the range of crocs and swimming around without fear of being eaten. At least that was what I was reassuring myself as we had to swim across the creek after our bank ended in sheer cliff.

The creek abounded in birds and I waited patiently as Douglas got all excited. "There's a bird, and I don't know what it is!" Even ignorant me recognised friarbirds, brown honeyeaters, peaceful doves. These birds were abundant and their calls the constant background of our walk.  Douglas foresaw happy times with the bird app trying to work out what the honeyeater with the white bib and the blue and red wren were. Yes, the iPhone, the third person in our relationship, had come on the walk. We were miles from coverage, but it had the bird app. I guess it is lighter than the bird book, and amazingly, it hadn't gone flat yet.

We were aiming for green ant camp - the last camp we had stayed at on the aborted trip in 2013, remembered for its abundant inhabitants.  Green ants make nests by weaving together leaves with a white web they produce, and you can often see several of them in a suitable tree. If you don't see them and brush past one, they come tearing out of the nest, mightily pissed off, swarm all over you and their bites hurt.  If you are lucky enough to be the first person, you stir them up but get out of there before they get onto you, leaving the poor people behind to cop the flack.  As I was navigating, Douglas had gotten a lot more green ant bites than I had.  Grevillea flowers were dripping with nectar, delicious to lick off, except on the occasion Douglas chomped down on a green ant that had gotten in before him. Formic acid hit him in the back of the nose like too much wasabi.

Green ant camp had been the first possible camp from the other direction, so this time it would be our last. The creek disappeared into a deep gorge just beneath the camp, so we knew we were close as we trudged up the ridge to pass around it. Then trudged more. And more. It was a bloody long gorge. Still the country looks amazing when you get a bit of height to peruse it from. Finally we saw the falls at its head and this season, the green ants were a lot thinner on the ground and we were lucky enough to see a turtle, which tried very hard to look like a rock on the bottom when it saw us. I couldn't bear waiting for it to move to get a better look, I felt too mean hanging out whilst it desperately held its breath wishing those nasty people would just leave.

 Final creek up through rugged country

 Sunrise at green ant camp

The next morning the friarbirds made a scene, fighting off a goshawk, which went and sat conveniently in a tree nearby for us before making another attempt. Douglas found one of its feathers, beautifully tiger striped, which he then stuck in my hair for the friarbirds to chase me off too.  A rainbow bee-eater landed in a tree beside us, beating the bee it had caught against the branch, clack, clack, clack. Shortly after we left camp, I turned to check Douglas was behind me and he had upended his pack on the ground, desperately searching for his binoculars. There was a sandstone shrike thrush, last of the escarpment birds on his twitching list. Highly important. I'm like a birdwatching widow. I think I'm chatting away with Douglas only to notice him staring at the bushes. Lying naked and alone on my side of the bed whilst Douglas researches intently on the bird app. Is there a Strava for twitchers? I hope not. I'll never have sex again if he finds one.

With the reassurance of knowing what we were headed for - a campsite we'd dubbed perfect pool - we launched over the escarpment. It involved a lot of climbing up, down and around pinnacles with a final climax of half climbing shrubbery, half rock down to our creek, and the falls we knew led to a sharp bend and rock chasm ending a perfectly round, blue pool. Approaching from the other direction 2 years ago, we'd been bashing up this disgusting swampy, thickly vegetated creek. Douglas was convinced we'd be camping by a buffalo wallow, but there was a pool marked on the map, so I forged ahead and bash out of the vegetation to see this pool. "Douglas, I think I've found paradise". We'd stayed 2 nights it had been so nice.

This time it had been burnt, not quite the perfection of our memory and we were going to get filthy. I lost Douglas to intensive study of the azure kingfisher, a tiny, iridescent blue bird with a beak so large it looks like it should fall forward under its weight. It perches above the pool, staring intently at the water, bobbing its head cutely, then, splash! It dives completely into the water and pops out with a fish. Then there was the unidentifiable honeyeater. One of half a dozen birds that look almost exactly the same apparently. I sighed. Another lonely night with the bird app...

Late afternoon, I'm disturbed from my book by something large in the bushes. It stops. It starts. It's no bird or lizard and we are only a day from the car, so I figure it's people turning up. Sad that we won't have our last night out here to ourselves. They don't seem to be getting here too quickly. Still, I remember it was not obvious where to go with the thick vegetation and the intermittent nature of the creek there. Douglas jokes that they are camping by a buffalo wallow. Then a buffalo walks out of the scrub. It's huge. So are its horns.  We scramble to our feet. Our stuff is strewn everywhere and we shove a few things into our packs and retreat towards rocky ground. Douglas grabs the coffee before the EPIRB. Are these things aggressive? It steps forward. Steps back. It probably just wants a drink. We think about it piling through the rest of our stuff and creep back to grab some more. The buffalo disappears and with relief we glimpse its bum heading away from us on the other side of the pool. Hopefully it had somewhere else to drink. We set up closer to the rocky ground this time just in case.

The next day we prepared for the eternal purgatory of filthy swamp creek, but the fire that had been through camp had also been through the creek. Pigs and buffalo had made a superhighway down the side of it and I have never been so appreciative of pest animals in my life.  We charged along fuelled by thoughts of barra burger.  At the junction with Barramundi Gorge, Douglas pulls up short. "That's a bloody big pig".  We sidle quietly up onto rocky country. Can pigs scramble? Pigs certainly attack. This one wasn't budging, just turning its head to follow us as we executed a broad circle around it on the rocks. At the last crossing before the car park, something dashed into the water just in front of me, sending me careering backwards in a hurry. A flash of a small reptilian tail. Probably a water monitor. Maybe a freshie. Not a saltie. Now, get us to that barra burger!

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