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- | ======The Sydney Bushwalker.====== | + | I believe |
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- | A monthly Bulletin devoted to matters of interest to The Sydney Bushwalkers, | + | |
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- | ===No. 113. May, 1944. Price 4d.=== | + | |
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- | |**Editor**|C. Kinsella| | + | |
- | |**Assistant Editor**|G. Jolly| | + | |
- | |**Business Manager**|J. Johnson| | + | |
- | |**Production**|Yvonne Rolfe| | + | |
- | |**Production Assistant**|Alice Wyborn| | + | |
- | |**Subscriptions**|Betty Dickinson| | + | |
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- | =====In This Issue: | + | |
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- | | | |Page| | + | |
- | |Cotter River|Alex Colley| 2| | + | |
- | |The Coachwood|Abores Australis| 4| | + | |
- | |Summer Days on Tumbledown Ck.|Alice Wyborn| 5| | + | |
- | |Nerang|Ubi| 6| | + | |
- | |What I've Heard| | 8| | + | |
- | |Letters from Lads| | 8| | + | |
- | |Letters to the Editor| |10| | + | |
- | |Our Own Meeting| |11| | + | |
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- | ====An Englishman' | + | |
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- | Dr. Thomas Wood in " | + | |
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- | All day we had the sombre bush, a twisting road, and the sky. Colours sank to a few greens and greys, spaced with a brown or two and the endlessly varied glimpses caught by the eye fuse into one in the memory - a track walled in by trees, bridged across by cloud. Monotonous? Yes. In the unimaginable number of trees which make the bush, the individual beauty of each is swallowed, only the mass remains. It has no shape. Its one beauty is colour. Take that away and what is left? In Australia, nothing. Worse than nothing, if seen at speed. Then its vastness is brought home to you, rammed in. Its eternal brooding silence chills you like winter cold. I never felt when I was in the Bush or going thru' | + | |
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- | =====Cotter River.===== | + | |
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- | by Alex Colley. | + | |
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- | In March 1937, Bill Hall and I, looking for new country for a ten day walk, noticed on the map Mount Bimberi. 6,274 ft. high, with several other mountains of over 6,000 in the vicinity. From these mountains flowed the Cotter River, looking about 25 miles long on the map. That was all we knew when we set forth on foot from Canberra along the road to the Cotter dam. We were picked up by a reticent Englishman who couldn' | + | |
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- | Most of that afternoon we walked in the water along the rocky river bed. Only occasionally did we leave the stream for the steep banks covered with stiff, wiry, thorny growth. We camped that night on a shale covered hillock next the river, having covered about a mile and a half by the map. Next day was much the same/ We developed a technique | + | |
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- | My next view of the Cotter was at Easter 1939 (those who were on the trip please omit this paragraph). This was in the good old days when there was petrol. Fourteen club members were induced to part with £2/14/7 each and we hired a Pioneer motor coach for four days. The story of how we fought our way down Ginini Creek and up the Cotter, camped among the stones just above a beautiful flat, loped up to the Cotter homestead, climbed Bimberi, sped down the other side to Gurrangorambla, | + | |
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- | But time is kind. It obliterates our sufferings; and Easter, 1944 found eleven of us once more bound for the Cotter. This time there was no petrol, so we had to walk roads through 9 miles of arid sheep country, then 7 miles, mostly uphill along a dry creekbed, and 4 more miles uphill along a road. This was our first day, from which we didn't recover. The next day was 12 miles along a track, according to the map. It was meant to be an easy day with good scenery. It would have been if the track had still existed, but as we found out the tracks on the Federal Capital Territory map in this region have mostly disappeared long ago. However three of the unblistered and one blistered member of the party found time to rush up Mount Kelly (6,001 ft) and obtained one of the best views in the district - a complete panorama, including Jagungal, the Kosciusko plateau, the Fiery Range, | + | |
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- | Next morning, after walking for over 3 hours at a steady 3 m.p.h, we had covered a track marked 6 1/2 miles on the map. In the afternoon the blistered ones got an early start and went up Kangaroo Creek, where there was supposed to be a track. The unblistered, | + | |
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- | Back at the railway station we were glad to find that the Scotlands had turned up. On the first day they had stayed to tend a wounded calf stuck between two rocks. They had a map with the route marked but missed us when we deviated from the course for a few miles and didn't find us again. Had we stayed to look for them we would probably have had to spend the whole four days in the sheep country. | + | |
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- | This story has no moral, but it is a good idea in new country to stick together, to plan short trips and not to believe the map track distances, or the tracks, till you have done them. I think it was the same in the early days of the Club when the Southern Blue Mountains was new country. Now, thanks to Miles Dunphy, we have a good walkers' | + | |
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- | =====May The Coachwood Be Exterminated? | + | |
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- | By Abores Australis. | + | |
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- | The coachwood (ceratopetalum apetalum) is the tree with green glossy leaves like those of the sassafras, but without their aromatic smell, with flowers like the Christmas bush, and with a tendency for the base of the trunk to be pyramid in shape because its roots do not go below the humus into the subsoil. It grows in our gully brush country, and is one of the trees that go to make up that lovely dense sub-tropical rain forest which probably once covered all the coastal districts of N.S.W. | + | |
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- | Its danger of extinction lies in the fact that it has not been found how to propagate it. It is noticed that along the upturned soil of a new road, it may spring up like wheat! but although the seed may duly germinate in nurseries, so far it has never been grown in forests artificially. Nothing is impossible. It used to be thought that hoop-pine could not be cultivated artificially, | + | |
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- | Meanwhile | + | |
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- | When the tree is cut under the supervision of the Forestry Department it is very carefully taken out; only the larger trees are felled and only in scattered groups. It is thereby hoped to preserve the forest cover to protect the young trees. But no matter how careful a forester is, he can never be certain what will happen | + | |
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- | Even more fatal to the life of the coachwood than our desire to destroy Japanese people or wear high-heeled shoes, is our failure to keep bush fires in check. It is only in the state forests that there is any fire-prevention scheme in working order. Outside the state forests the fires spread unchecked every year, especially in primitive virgin country, and as we all know, once our brush country is swept by fires there is no possibility of its regeneration in our life-time and possibly never, and the coachwood, which lives on the humus of decayed leaves, suffers irretrievably. | + | |
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- | =====Summer Days On Tumbledown Creek.===== | + | |
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- | By Alice Wyborn. | + | |
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- | River oaks etched against a pale afternoon sky, and the roar of the river, greeted us as we followed the track down the last ridge, and dropped our packs on a green carpet of grass by the creek. | + | |
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- | We had been told at Brindabella we would find a good camp-site with excellent fishing at the junction of the Goodradigbee River and Tumbledown Creek (also known as Flea Creek), and our first view of the spot certainly justified the description - at least, as far as the camp-site went - the fishing we were to prove later. | + | |
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- | 0ur tent was quickly erected on a lovely green flat surrounded by pink blossomed briar roses, and we then went exploring. | + | |
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- | After leaving Brindabella the Goodradigbee River winds its way through | + | |
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- | We enjoyed perfect weather for swimming and exploring the river and creek, and in the evenings we went fishing when the last rays of the sun, shining through the trees, cast lacy patterns over all. Here in the calm, cool evenings, one could sit quietly by the river holding a rod and line, hoping to catch a trout, and nearly always doing so - but whet matter if no fish were caught - here we had peace and beauty, and the world at large seemed very far away. | + | |
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- | One day we went five miles up the creek' which we found to be very pretty, and after leaving the cool green glades, climbed out on a long ridge, our objective being the summit of Mt. Coree (4,60Oft). It was a hot day and we were glad to reach the top at 2 p.m. five hours after leaving camp. Here we had lunch and enjoyed a wonderful panorama | + | |
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- | Never did we tire of scrambling among the rocks on the river and wandering through the cool glades of the creek, inhabited by many varieties of birds and plenty of rabbits. The latter would sit up at our approach, eyeing us curiously before scurrying away to their burrows, with little white tails bobbing. | + | |
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- | When we reluctantly said goodbye to our paradise, we promised it a further visit in the distant future, when we hope to find it still as lovely and unspoilt. | + | |
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- | =====Nerang.===== | + | |
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- | By " | + |
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