The Corn Trail

The Corn Trail is a recently renovated historic-interest bushwalk in the Monga National Park, inland from Batemans Bay. I'd actually never heard of it (or of Monga National Park), but some of my bushwalking companions had, and were keen to check it out. It's 12 to 15 km long, depending on which authority and/or GPS device you trust, and involves an ascent or descent of about 650m.

From the National Parks website:

Take a journey back in time and follow a route that has been used for thousands of years. Popular today with bushwalkers and horse riding groups, Corn Trail walking track was originally used by Aboriginals on their seasonal travels between the coast and the tablelands, then later by European settlers on pack horses carrying supplies.

This historic trail takes you downhill from high mountain ridges to deep rainforest-filled valleys. You'll pass the gently flowing Buckenbowra River, wander through warm temperate rainforest and walk through eucalypt forests. You’ll also catch glimpses of Mount Budawang and the sandstone peaks of Pigeon House and Castle Mountain further north.

It’s a difficult walk, so you’ll need to come prepared, but the scenery is worth it. A carpark at the bottom allows you to do a car shuffle and have a vehicle and supplies waiting for you at the end.

It's not that super-difficult, especially if you do it from north to south (ie downhill). But it was more substantial than we'd expected, and we even met a couple of people with a full backpack, doing the uphill direction to practice for a big Himalayan excursion to come. They told us there was a nice surprise to come.

The surprise was a beautiful patch of rainforest, a total contrast to the earlier vegetation types we'd passed through.

Climbing Mt Gulaga - a two-humped dromedary

The picturesque South Coast settlement of Tilba Tilba is the starting point for the walk up iconic Mt Gulaga. The area is the setting for the SBS reality TV show 'River Cottage', and I seem to remember farmer Paul once leading his colourful friends on a trip up the mountain.

It used to be called Mt Dromedary, and the name change neatly solves the embarrassment of the two-humped mountain and the one-humped camel. They made the same mistake with the Tasmanian Dromedary, by the way.

Here we are setting out from Tilba Tilba on our nearly 800m ascent.









It's a fairly easy, steady climb over an hour or three to the official summit.







You pass an information board about the aboriginal heritage of the place, and the later gold-mining period. Then after a final assault and exploration of some scenic volcanic boulders and excellent rainforest pockets, you are welcomed to the top.

But it's a two-humped mountain, right? And our maps seem to indicate a nameless second top, a few metres higher, at 806m against our 797m. It's only a kilometre and a half as the Wonga Pigeon flies, so we decide to press on through the bush.

We don't make it to the true peak - the tracks marked on the maps seem to have long succumbed. We do encounter lots more magnificent rainforest though, and we have our lunches in one such pocket, prior to navigating back to the easy track down.

Bushwalking Mt Bushwalker

Every bushwalker should climb Mt Bushwalker at some stage. My bushwalking friends and I were off on a trip down the NSW South Coast, and so it was an obvious choice for the itinerary.


Except it's not so much a bushwalk up a mountain' but a gentle, flat stroll along an easy track to a cliff-top lookout area.

The view is excellent though. You get a good view of the Budawangs. That's The Castle just to the left of centre here. And if you were looking up from the Clyde Gorge below, it probably would look like a mountain.

It's in Morton National Park, and it's accessed via Porters Creek Dam Rd. It's about 30 min from Milton on the Princes Highway.

Some splendid South Coast caravan parks

A group of us went on a nice little excursion down the South Coast recently. We based ourselves in caravan parks in Narooma and Milton, and did a series of excellent day walks in the nearby national parks.











Narooma's Surf Beach Holiday Park Resort is beautifully located. Great views of the beach, the sunrise, and the Glasshouse Rocks.

 














In Milton, the Milton Valley Holiday Park was extraordinarily pleasant and welcoming. Despite it being school holiday time, it was uncrowded and very quiet. Most of the holidaying families would have been closer to the beaches, at Mollymook or Ulladulla.

One slight drawback was the presence of fruiting palm trees above us. Through the night fruit bats were swooping around, harvesting the fruit, and noisily dropping the seeds on car and cabin roofs. They dropped their excrement onto our tents too!


Next morning we did a very scenic and quite lengthy stroll along a series of beaches to Mollymook.

The River Caves

Also in the Deep Pass area of the Gardens of Stone is a fabulous canyon known as the River Caves. Again, it's a bit wet and slippery, but could be easily traversed in 10 minutes. Except that it's so photogenic that you're inclined to linger for an hour or two.

We were there mid afternoon, and I'm told the light is best earlier in the day, when the sun shines down through the narrow gap overhead. I'll no doubt be back there one day to check that out.

Deep Pass and its Nayook Canyon

Morning tea at the rather fine-looking Deep Pass camp site, prior to our traverse of the magnificent Nayook Canyon, also known as Deep Pass Canyon. It's one of the Gardens of Stone's wet canyons, but fortunately it's not as wet as many of them.

So it's a rather slippery-slidey sort of experience, but there are strategically placed ropes to help you along. You don't need to go waste-deep all that often.

An excellent way to spend your morning!

Deep Pass and its 'T-Bone Slot'

My Thursday bushwalking group was exploring the Deep Pass area of the Gardens of Stone the other day. We checked out the 'T-Bone Slot', an enormous and rather magnificent T-shaped slot formation.

Outsmarted!

There it suddenly was! The car I spent all of last year trying to hunt down.


I was at the Smart Energy Expo in Darling Harbour. Hyundai was there, showing off its Ioniq range of electric and hybrid cars. My old car was on its last legs last year, and I'd been extremely keen to try out the plug-in hybrid version.

It was much touted as the first 'affordable' such car. The (smallish) battery gives it a range of 60km or so using (perhaps free solar) electric energy from your home power point. This covers most journeys you normally do. You don't need to worry about the limited range though, as it also has a hybrid petrol engine, so you can happily set off on long journeys too.

The trouble was that it was always a few months away from being launched in Australia. The date kept getting put back. Replacing my old car was becoming daily more urgent. Eventually I had to settle for a rival Toyota Corolla.

So I asked the Hyundai salesman whether his car was indeed available now. Guess what? It's still a few months away! The story was that the right-hand drive versions are so popular in the UK that they're struggling to service that market, and we just have to keep waiting.





I was at the expo to help out with the Solar Citizens stall. Solar Citizens is a voluntary community group of solar energy users and enthusiasts. They mount campaigns such as the 'Fair Price for Solar' one which had some success last year when electricity companies were persuaded by the regulator to increase the feed-in tariffs they pay. There's pressure to reduce them again now, I heard, because wholesale electricity prices have been coming down, thanks in fact to the massive take-up of household solar! So the campaign goes on.

Brushing is what we do!

Excuse the mess indeed! Not many suburban Sydney gardeners are quick to excuse the brush-turkeys that take up residence and mess up their gardens.

This one has made itself at home in a front yard near us. He built this enormous mound. His mate laid her eggs in it, and he's been tending it for weeks, defending it and rearranging it to keep the incubation  temperature exactly right. When the eggs hatch the chicks spend a day or two burrowing upwards and outwards. Then they're off into the world to fend for themselves.

Most gardeners try to evict a brush turkey before he gets too comfortable, but this one seems to have human friends looking out for him.

Mutiny on the marathon

The annual bushwalkers' marathon took place recently. This year I took them from Manly to St Leonards, via harbourside tracks, beaches, and the odd heritage-listed fortification.

The concept of the marathon walk is simple. You start early, finish late, and take only short breaks. By the end of the day you'll have walked 42.2km. It's as simple as that.

Actually the hard bit is keeping the group together and putting down rebellions. They're always very keen at the start, but towards the end, all kinds of excuses emerge for taking short cuts or creatively manipulating GPS distance measurements.

I was ready for some of the early drop-outs. Due notice had been given. But I was a bit disappointed when half the remaining walkers took an unauthorised shortcut to the pub at about the 40km mark! Fancy inviting their instant disqualifications like that, when so near the end!

Below is most of  the group at the 33km mark, at Luna Park. See if you can identify the soon-to-be mutineers among them!

Biennale festival seeking refuge itself?

It's Biennale time again on Cockatoo Island. It's still worth a visit, if only because the place itself is such an interesting old relic. But the exhibits are a bit thin on the ground this time.




The decline started in 2014, when boycotts by artists erupted because of the sponsorship of the event by Transfield, who also happened to run offshore detention centres. Then the sponsorship got cancelled.

Star of the show this year is Ai Weiwei, and his enormous 'Law of the Journey' refugee-themed artwork. My picture doesn't do it justice, but it's several metres high and 60 metres long.

He's a busy man and was already off on another mission elsewhere in the world. I'd been hoping to share my story with him about my Beijing guide a few years ago. She'd been shocked and horrified about the belief by us westerners that Ai Weiwei had inspired the design of Beijing's 'Bird's Nest' Olympic stadium. "NO NO NO - HE DIDN'T DESIGN IT! It was a Swiss company!" She was desperate to do her bit to reinforce her government's line about one of China's least favoured sons.












Some of the exhibits were a bit interesting in a rather unexciting way. There was a pile of mudworm droppings deposited by a giant 3D printer.


And a big table with blobs of coloured gloop on it.











The old convict buildings were looking good though, enhanced on this occasion by a brickwork patio installation.