Back to the Mountains

My occasional Thursday adventure bushwalking group reconvened last week, and celebrated with a return to the Blue Mountains. We'd stayed away during the many months of disasters, the natural ones and the both personal and worldwide medical ones.

We revisited the dramatic headlands overlooking the Grose River to the north of Mount Victoria: Asgard Head, Valhalla Head, and Ikara Head. And I've got it all sorted out which one is which now.





We discovered the upper reaches of Asgard Brook, in a rather deep  and steep gully.

Below: the magnificently precipitous cliffs at Asgard Head

Asgard Swamp

Valhalla Head, I think

Ladies Rocks

And............ a dingo turned up!



He wasn't shy, and followed us around for a while. He was probably hungry, given the devastation of the burnt landscape and annihilation of almost everything he'd normally eat. I imagine he was hoping he could charm us into feeding him. There again, if one of us had developed a limp and fallen over........


Ikara Head

Adivasi

This lady is a Keralan 'adivasi', a member of an  indigenous 'tribal' group, in the Wayanad region, who I was introduced to. It's often been said that some indigenous Indians look effectively identical to some Australian aborigines, and I think this is a good illustration.

I gather there's still lots of discussion, and lots of research being done on the links between the two populations, but I've been reading that there's a view that about 4000 years ago there was a migration wave from southern India to Northern Australia, and this brought about similarities in DNA and in languages, and brought the dingo to Australia.

Here's an interesting piece on this:
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/5/1803.abstract