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The Sydney Bushwalker.

A monthly Bulletin devoted to matters of interest to The Sydney Bushwalkers, 5 Hamilton Street, Sydney.


No. 113. May, 1944. Price 4d.

EditorC. Kinsella
Assistant EditorG. Jolly
Business ManagerJ. Johnson
ProductionYvonne Rolfe
Production AssistantAlice Wyborn
SubscriptionsBetty Dickinson

In This Issue:

Page
Cotter RiverAlex Colley 2
The CoachwoodAbores Australis 4
Summer Days on Tumbledown Ck.Alice Wyborn 5
NerangUbi 6
What I've Heard 8
Letters from Lads 8
Letters to the Editor 10
Our Own Meeting 11

An Englishman's impression of the Bush.

Dr. Thomas Wood in “Cobbers” writes:-

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' it, that it wished me harm; that a malignant power lurked hidden hut active, such as I have known in a tropical forest, waiting for a chance to strike - a something that made me start and look over my shoulder, scared. The bush is not like that. It wished me no harm because it never saw me. Its utter indifference, of the heart eaten away by melancholy, are true. A man 1ost in the bush goes mad. The bush is not to blame. Like the sea it knows nothing of love or hate. It is too old to care.


Cotter River.

by Alex Colley.

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't understand what we were up to, but was well infused with the public-school code to appear curious. Let it be said, however, that we have always thought highly of him, for not only did he save us ten miles of road walking, but he took us over a path to a point well above the dam, where he left us, proferring no caution and asking no questions.

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 of following the banks on the inner sides of bends, often rising far above the river and scrambling down the precipitous slopes where the river had cut in before deflecting round the end of a ridge. The only place we could find to camp was a small patch of grass in a hollow - all right if it didn't rain. It did, and midnight found us sitting on a rock with our packs watching the water swirl through the tent. There was nothing for it but to crawl up the hill-side and pitch camp on the stones. That day we had covered three miles by the map (so far as we could tell). Next afternoon we were overjoyed to come upon Ginini Creek and nearby a flat with white gums and grass. We did five miles that day. There was more rough going next morning, relieved by stretches of open timber. By afternoon the valley had opened out and we came to long flats covered with russet-brown kangaroo grass. White gums gave way to small “black” ash trees with smooth, dark-green trunks. Ahead of us great dark rounded mountains, many with bare granite summits, rose from the floor of the valley. We were thankful to make the shelter of the old Cotter homestead just as an ominous black raincloud rolled down the valley, accompanied by a bitter wind. There we stayed for two pleasant days, during which we climbed Bimberi. Then on to Yaouk, through sheep and cattle country to Gudgenby station, a little beyond which we were picked up by a philosopher and wireless merchant who took us in to Queanbeyan.

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, run along Long Plain and down Coolemon Creek, is too well known to bear repetition. Never to be forgotten were our feelings on finding that the motor coach was waiting for us on top of Brindabella Mountain, unable to get down, nor the long journey to Sydney between 11 p.m. and 6.30 a.m. our search for food at 2 a.m. in Goulburn, and the sun lighting the tower of Central Railway as we arrived back, just in time for work.

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, all the mountains on either side of the Cotter, the Murrumbidgee plains and the Tinderry Range. Each mountain in the foreground was a separate peak, so that there was no continuous range on any side to obstruct the view. It was a splendid vista of granite cape, rounded mountain masses and distant peaks. Right beneath were some beautiful little upland flats dotted with snow-gums.

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, starting a bit later, decided the track must be on the ridge above the Creek and started up to look for it. This was a bad mistake. It is psychologically impossible to come down a mountain from half way up. There were calls for a while. Once they sounded quite near. The ones on top thought the others were half way up. The ones below thought the others were half way down. So both parties waited half an hour. The ones below were sitting on the track - quite a good one. The ones on top climbed and climbed, inevitably, right to the top of the highest mountain in the vicinity, Mount McKeahnie, then along the ridge top over granite boulders and through wet succulent undergrowth, to camp eventually in the dark on a rocky hillside, just 50 yards above a delightful grassy flat and less than 10 minutes from the track. Next day we all met again on the Murrumbidgee (“You should have seen the view from McKeahnie - on boy!) The mountaineers had to walk fast and far to get out, but fortunately were in good fettle. A little further on we were picked up by our gas-producer taxi.

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.

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' map with all the tracks and negotiable routes shown. Another help is the fact that there is nearly always someone in the party who knows the way and the walking time. Perhaps now I know enough of the Cotter country to p1an a good walk. Who would like to come next time?


May The Coachwood Be Exterminated?

By Abores Australis.

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.

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, but after many years of painstaking research its secrets have been laid bare and there are now plantations of it. The same must be done in respect of coachwood, and the Forestry Department has its eye on a promising young student, who appears to have a flair for this kind of thing, and has sent him to Sydney University for a special course of training. In a few years time he will set to work on the coachwood and other trees, but at the earliest it will be many years before we feel secure about the coachwood.

Meanwhile the timber of this tree is in tremendous demand. It is a hard soft-wood of even and consistent grain so that it can be cut into very fine plywood useful for making, among other things, mosquito bombers. But in addition to this extensive field of wholly wasteful application, there is a big demand for it in high class cabinet work, while whole truck loads go to make the wooden heels of ladies' shoes. One small way in which bushwalkers might help to preserve the coachwood until it is learned how to propagate it, would be to give up wearing or admiring high-heeled shoes!

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 when one of nature's factors is taken away, that is of course, until the secret of the tree's propagation is discovered.

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.


Summer Days On Tumbledown Creek.

By Alice Wyborn.

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.

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.

0ur tent was quickly erected on a lovely green flat surrounded by pink blossomed briar roses, and we then went exploring.

After leaving Brindabella the Goodradigbee River winds its way through some rough, rocky country with granite walls on either side, and at the junction of Tumbledown Creek rushes out from the gorge with a mighty roar and sweeps in an abrupt turn to the north-west. The creek was flowing crystal clear, and its lovely green flats and ferny banks make an ideal spot for peaceful camping.

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.

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 of the surrounding country, and could look back over the mountains and plains we had traversed the previous week. Away to the east was the city of Canberra, its white buildings just visible in the sunlight, and the water in the Cotter Dam sparkling like a deep blue sapphire. The trip back to camp was made in much quicker time, for we were anxious to get back to our fishing. We found that from about 7 p.m. till 8 p.m. was the best time to catch the trout.

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.

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.


Nerang.

By “Ubi”.

194405.1507857773.txt.gz · Last modified: 2017/10/13 12:22 by tyreless

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