Bushwalk Australia

The walk down the aisle

The SCT without any significant side trips.

This one might be more interesting. I think I wouldn't go back to :

1) Lower Glenelg NP : the gorge is beautiful, but the pine plantations just ruin the area for me. This is preposterous to have planted those eyesores next to this beautiful area. Shame on you Victoria.
2) Nambung NP (the pinnacles) : good looking area, ruined by the road and the massive number of tourists.
3) Lime Bay State Reserve, TAS : a bit "bland" with poorly signed tracks and no real interest. More interesting as a camping and boating spot.
4) Cataract Gorge Reserve : too many signs of human occupation, not wild enough for me.
5) Lilly Pilly Gully, Wilsons Prom' : a quite boring walk. No views, flood damage.
6) Lerderderg State Park, VIC : not a big fan of this park, I don't know why. Too many goats, tracks are poorly maintained and signed, often dry and full of snakes, but mostly it gives me an uneasy feeling. Some places you feel right at home, some places you just don't, can't explain it.
7) Heathcote NP : not a walking park, more a camping/4WD one. The walk up Mt Ida is pretty boring.
8 ) Millstream-Chichester : a good example of how mining can ruin a park. The Millstream part has a huge water pipeline on its border, with ugly buildings, clearly visible on the walk starting near the visitor centre. Such a shame.
9) Greater Bendingo NP : the walk up One Tree Hill ends in an ugly radio tower with the surroundings full of rubbish. A park which is apparently ruined by a minority (I hope) of bogans in Bendingo, thinking they can drive there, and dump their beer-cans and McDonald's boxes.
10) Churchill NP : a joke of an NP. Incredibly small, crisscrossed by high voltage power lines, it's more like a city park (except those don't have the power lines towering 20 m high in them...). A symbol of how National Park legislation needs to be changed in Australia. It's good that it's (kinda) preserved, it isn't good that they call this an NP.

Speaking of uneasy feelings. I've never returned to Chauncy Vale Reserve, just out of Bagdad TAS. Quite an interesting place for a wander but I spent the whole time feeling like I was being watched..

Overlandman wrote:The walk down the aisle

Lol, I'm with you on that one. Whilst Hallu has some valid ones I'd still go back to them but I will not go back to this one.

Any Westfield conglomerate before Christmas period, never ever EVER doing that again! Pine trees and gravel roads looking like heaven compared.

Walking out of the ground, after the Pies beat the Doggies,(happens a lot) ........

vicrev wrote:Walking out of the ground, after the Pies beat the Doggies,(happens a lot) ........

Be careful. You are giving walkon a big head

Facts are facts,but,this year is going to be different,I will be walking out of the ground (after EVERY game) with a smile on my face & a spring in my step ( Doggies supporters are the supreme optimists !!).......

vicrev wrote:,I will be walking out of the ground (after EVERY game) with a smile on my face & a spring in my step

That's the spirit vicrev. I hope the Dogs have a great year

Back on topic. Not many walks I wouldn't do again but there are plenty I still want to do. The still to do's will always come before the already done's.

All of the walks I have done over the past 20+ years I would do again and in fact have done so on several ,did I make a good choice on them first time up

MickyB wrote:

vicrev wrote:Walking out of the ground, after the Pies beat the Doggies,(happens a lot) ........

Be careful. You are giving walkon a big head

Ah memories of a second semi final and johno's last game would be one game that comes to mind vicrev. Such pleasant memories for some and devastation I guess for others.

He he.

Winning the VFL Grand Final last year,Ahhhh, Ivé replayed that a thousand times..........

icefest wrote:The SCT without any significant side trips.

Yes, without the side trips it's just a walk but add in Louisa Bay and Osmiridium Beach and it has a different feeling. Any other good sidetrips on this walk that I missed?

Graham51 wrote:Yes, without the side trips it's just a walk but add in Louisa Bay and Osmiridium Beach and it has a different feeling. Any other good sidetrips on this walk that I missed?

PB, Ironbound summit. I didn't think much of Osmiridium.

Nangar N.P

At least the way we went in, from farm land below the cliff line.

It was horrible.

On the hottest days in February we set out on a Ducane Traverse. Instead of skirting the base of Mt Gould I saw a cairn leading up - and up and up and up to car-sized boulders and no water. I thought the cairn would take me an easier way but instead I nearly died from heat exhaustion and lugging a full pack up and over the mountain. In the end we didn't even get to the summit! I won't go that way again!!!

I walked up to Snowy North in a squallish, wet, overcast day a few weeks ago. Can't say I'm in a hurry to revisit that one. Pretty crappy experience all round.

Trekking out of Sturt's Stony Desert totally unprepared wearing only sand shoes at night forced to walk it all in one night to escape the 45+C day heat in mid January to reach another camp site all because of a dead 4x4 car battery!



Couldn't walk for days afterwards as my heals and soles of my feet were so badly swollen from not having proper boots on all the sharp stones!

Our friends drove us back to the car in their plush Range Rover. It felt like I was a god floating over hell on earth.

Gives me shivers even thinking about it years later! Never been back... yet!

Were you able to walk out just in one night? Those gravel/stones are bad. Encountered similar at Kata-Tjuta and found out my Keen boots were inadequate for the surface. Painful.

GPSGuided wrote:Were you able to walk out just in one night? Those gravel/stones are bad.

The tape in the tape deck ground to a halt. With the $X$ there was no chance of jacking or pushing for a jump start. The day time temps were horrendous and the flies had to be physically removed not just swatted. I said were done for if we don't make a move back to the other camp site ASAP. We grabbed a canteen each, hat and sunglasses and set off retracing our wheel tracks at night.



We calculated that we would have 13 hours max before the sun got up and became too hot and the last thing was to be caught out in the open in these high January temps! So we budgeted our pace (jog) and got to the other camp site just after dawn. We were lucky as we only noticed them as we passed by some days before...

... we sat at the front of their tent waiting for them to wake up, we didn't want to disturb them. They said "hi guys, what's going on?"

The amazing thing was the stars and the wildlife. We literally had to walk around the animals there were so many of them and even though there was no moon that night, the milky way was so bright you could read your watch off the star light.

----------------------------

Compass, GPS, CamelBak, spare boots and PLB are boxed and stored in the vehicle with HF at all times on all trips since.

Lucky the campers were still there or its starting to sound like Burke and Wills! Amazing tale. Did you guys not have a portable HF radio on alternate power or a PLB?

Not amazing, just stupid!

We were overconfident 'gung-ho' city slicker students out for a 'Mars mission' desert buzz .

The entire trip was a costly lesson on not what to do in every situation as every mistake was made and luckily remembered. The worst mistake we made was to leave a stack of 4 cases of Coopers Ale unattended at the back door of the car for just a few moments in Wilcannia.

We never saw what became of our only beer...

LOL! Sounded like an excellent walk for the others when there are free Coopers to be had... From the back of 4x4s.

People still leave their vehicle in the outback? So much can go wrong...



I won't walk Brookton Hwy to North Bannister on the Bibbulmun again, despite the beauty and the wildlife. Picking hundreds and hundreds of pepper ticks off me and my gear has so many knobs on I can't even begin to count.

Zone-5 your predicament reminds me of a similar situation I found myself in, in the outback........

We broke a suspension part on our camper a long way from help


Had to leave the camper while we drove to find a place to fix the part




As luck would have it we found a cattle station that was only 500 klms wide but their workshop wasn't far from us and they allowed me to use their equipment to fix the part.....even with all my safety clothing


I know its got nothing to do with a walk I wouldn't do again but felt it was worth showing given the context of the last couple of posts

We've done almost literarily the same thing danshell

icefest wrote:We've done almost literarily the same thing danshell

Broken camper....had to fix it at a cattle station? Well the story needs to be told

Pretty impressive that you guys can DIY on all that!

DanShell wrote:

icefest wrote:We've done almost literarily the same thing danshell

Broken camper....had to fix it at a cattle station? Well the story needs to be told

Leaf spring snapped and swung around breaking other things and shredded the tyre. Managed to weld the spring at a station and leave just before the the week of rain came. Incidentally the next day was the coldest day on record in that area of the desert.

icefest wrote:Leaf spring snapped

DanShell wrote:We broke a suspension part on our camper a long way from help

My home made box trailer has a complete trailing arm, torsion bar sprung, anti-roll bar, shocked, Subaru Brumby 4x4 rear suspension and subi wheels; indestructible!



Ok back to topic...