Black Hill

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Welcome readers,

It has been ages since we had been walking, with other engagements and foul weather making it impossible to get out.

Full of anticipation - with a glorious day before us - we ended up doing a walk that was quite close to home (40 minutes) - the Black Hill Conservation Park.

We had visited the Black Hill Park before and had done a 4.5 hour walk - we trimmed it to 2 hours for our late start today - by doing the George Driscoll walk (50 real bushwalks around Adelaide) rather than that recommended track in '20 Nature walks in Mount Lofty Ranges'.

The park was in full flower today - and the clear weather afforded excellent views of Adelaide all the way to the coast. There were plenty of lizards (sunning themselves on the warm rocks) and nesting parrots and other birds (using available tree holes in the giant gums).

The walk that we did was a loop - it a steep up for an hour up a rocky path up the western side of the hill that ended with the Black Hill summit, and then a steep down track on the northern slope, again for about an hour. From here there were magnificent views to the North towards the Hope Valley reservoir.

Dan says .....

We started our walk with a picnic lunch under the big gum trees. There was lots of noise of squawking birds nesting in the big gum tree - there were pairs of Sulphur-crested cockatoos galahs parrots and top knot pigeons.

The climb up was hard. It was a straight up hill. There were lots of rocks on the path, but many of them were loose. I had to grab onto some rocks to pull myself up. I had to walk slowly as I got a blister on my foot. There were few orchids along the path - we don't see this type of flower very often.

The walk was extra tough today because it was so hot! I thought I wasn't going to make it, but I managed to. We sweated a lot as we walked - we could have done with extra deodourant!!.

I was the one who saw the lizard in the photograph. I could tell it was a lizard by the shadow. It looked a bit like a baby bearded dragon - because that is what it was. To see more bearded dragon pictures click here . There were a lot of flies around as well as dragon flies - but we didn't see the goats that we had seen the last time we went to Black Hill. Perhaps it was too hot for the goats too.

I saw a large group of shady gum trees on the down track - they must have had very strong roots to live up in the mountains in hot weather. Perhaps there was a gap in the rocks underground that meant they could dig down deep to get some water to grow there. The tress provided some nice shade while we looked at the view.

Now for the joke for this week:

Q. Why did the duck cross the road?
A. Because the chicken was sick.

To finish - I rate this walk as a toughie - extremely hard, only do it if you are fit for walking.

Dan

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Photos

The Black Hill summit
This photo was taken looking North just below the Black Hill summit.

Views of Adelaide
This was about 1/3 of the way up the rocky hill - you can see the Adelaide skyline.

Purple flowers
Dan pointing out some large purple flowers

Yacca
Xanthorrhoea semiplana