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--- 199001 [2020/04/09 05:41] – [Bird Track] rogerbrowne
+++ 199001 [2020/04/09 05:46] – [All you need to know about the Bird track] rogerbrowne
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 The Editor
-===== All you need to know about the Bird track =====
+===== All you need to know about the BIRD track =====
 by Jim Brown
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 On reading this particular item I behaved like that naive girl "Little Audrey" who featured in a series of smutty jokes back in the 1930s, and I laughed and laughed and laughed ... because I was sure the route had been volunteered over the telephone and been misheard. You see, Helensburgh has a final "h" in the spelling, and the track from there out towards the coast is the "Burgh Track" borrowing the last syllable of the town name. But there's another complication, because the town is named after a mining town in Scotland, not so far from the Scottish capital Edinburgh ... and that's not usually pronounced as "Edin-burg".
-When I discovered that last fact a good many years ago I tried for a while to do what I thought was the right thing. I soon found that if I asked a Railway Booking Clerk for a "Weekend excursion ticket to Helens-burra" he would look at me in a peculiar way and ask "Where?" Presently I surrendered to ''force majeure'', especially after I joined SBW and heard Bob Younger's story about the American serviceman travelling on a south coast train during the War years peering at the blacked-out station and asking plaintively, "Say, what burg is this?" to which the walkers answered, "Oh, I guess it's Helen's".
+When I discovered that last fact a good many years ago I tried for a while to do what I thought was the right thing. I soon found that if I asked a Railway Booking Clerk for a "Weekend excursion ticket to Helens-burra" he would look at me in a peculiar way and ask "Where?" Presently I surrendered to //force majeure//, especially after I joined SBW and heard Bob Younger's story about the American serviceman travelling on a south coast train during the War years peering at the blacked-out station and asking plaintively, "Say, what burg is this?" to which the walkers answered, "Oh, I guess it's Helen's".
 But what I really want to waffle on about is the Burgh ... sorry, Bird Track, because
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 I certainly had no difficulty on that first time over the Burgh Track, and came to the Railway Station about 3.25 pm. I killed time by walking down the line to the No.1 tunnel, half a mile south, to watch the Up South Coast Daylight Express storm out of the shaft in a cloud of smoke and steam. I wished I had a camera to record it.
-The next memorable journey along the Track was on 15th January, 1939. I can place the exact date, because it was the day after "Black Saturday" when the temperature in Sydney reached 113.5 in the Fahrenheit scale (45.3C). That day big areas in Victoria and the Southern Tablelands of NSW were savaged by bush fires, some people perishing. However, a southerly change blew through late at night, and when Bill and I stepped from the train at Helensburgh about 9.50 am on the Sunday the mercury had dropped to 68F (20C) and it was drizzling rain. Bill and I planned to do our very first overnight walk on the Australia Day weekend, a fortnight away, and hoped to do a lively day walk to "get in condition".
+The next memorable journey along the Track was on 15th January, 1939. I can place the exact date, because it was the day after "Black Saturday" when the temperature in Sydney reached 113.5 in the Fahrenheit scale (45.3°C). That day big areas in Victoria and the Southern Tablelands of NSW were savaged by bush fires, some people perishing. However, a southerly change blew through late at night, and when Bill and I stepped from the train at Helensburgh about 9.50 am on the Sunday the mercury had dropped to 68°F (20°C) and it was drizzling rain. Bill and I planned to do our very first overnight walk on the Australia Day weekend, a fortnight away, and hoped to do a lively day walk to "get in condition".
 As far as the Hacking River crossing the vegetation was a bit withered and sun-scorched, but undamaged. On the hill up to Maynards (Garawarra) it was a desolation of blackened tree-trunks, grey and white ash and seared reddened leaves - where there were any left. Once we paused where a big tree was still smouldering, with plumes of smoke coming from broken branches, like steam from the spout of a kettle. Then we moved around to the up-hill side, and found the trunk was a hollow shell with the interior still glowing angrily in each puff of wind. We ran until we were beyond its reach if it should collapse. The clearing at Maynards was a tiny island in a sea of devastation.