Wonga Walk

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It’s Thursday 16 May and no it’s not time travel time or anything bizarre or weird. I’m home and in fact it’s 3 months before ‘real blogs’ begin but I’m experimenting with blog sites hoping to find one similar to the site I’ve used before. They closed, something to do with me being their only user! The site was good as it provided maps, excellent provision for photos, easy access for readers, means for feedback and the ability to drop text and photos into a hard copy book at a very reasonable price. If I have to explain ‘hard copy book at a reasonable price’ you better stop reading now as it’s going to be really tough for both of us.

What follows, in text and photos, is one of my daily walks from home, around the neighbourhood, along the river and back home. It’s a little longer than my normal route but hopefully each week but more realistically each 2 weeks the dog and I manage this walk and always enjoy it.

The dog is ’the dog’ presently and nor deserving of his usual honorific because he has disgraced himself by rolling in very fresh but very smelly wombat poo. You don’t need to be a poo expert to know it’s very smelly nor to know it’s wombat because before being rolled in the droppings are noticeably cuboid. Apparently it’s so the turds don’t roll back into the burrows and in a way they are quite interesting and quite unique (don’t you love a qualifier preceding unique!) although it loses any appeal when smudged into your dog’s coat.

It’s almost exactly 3 months before Julie (you remember her. We walked the TMB together two years back) and I walk the Pennine Way. This blog entry is preparation for that walk. The walk isn’t the preparation strangely enough it’s the blogging I need practice with. I’m lucky enough to walk most days, well if I don’t work I walk so it’s not the fitness, hills, terrain stuff but the obligatory social media stuff that I’m tackling because we all know that if it’s not on social media then it didn’t happen.

I walk about 4 km, mainly alongside a busy road before getting into the local Parks Victoria reserve. It’s a National Park (what dog?) and it’s close and convenient and provides some lovely vistas. The kangaroo sot is just that, a kangaroo shot. There are heaps around at the moment and wherever I walk they are common. The drought brings them closer and at the local golf course they are in fact a bit of a problem (for golfers not tourists). They usually bound through the bush before the dog sees them and even if he pursues them I’m not concerned he’ll ever manage to catch up with one because they are remarkably nimble and adept in the bush (that’s if I had a dog).

The track runs roughly parallel to the river for a few kilometres without really sighting it as the bush is dense although the track wide and easy to follow. The mob of kangaroos is on a sort of ‘common’ area where sheep and cattle were once fattened as they were herded to market here. The area around here has a white settlement history that’s almost 150 years old (for us that’s old) and the common is strangely at odds with the surrounding native bush land.

The ‘Harry Potter cobweb walk’ is, or was, thankfully devoid of webs today. It’s seasonal and at times so thick it’s necessary to walk through them with some kind of arm propeller action in order to clear the way first. I sort of like it and to be honest I’ve never even seen a single spider there so it’s just my imagination that gets any kind of workout here.

Then it’s Yarra River time. The Yarra dominates the walk for 5km or so with some lovely small rapids, some picturesque bends and most significantly for me a delightful sound track that changes with each deviation of the track. Access is difficult here so there are few spots for swimming or stopping and the wrap here is very serene and very peaceful.

Then it’s uphill. I actually walk to the highest point around here. It’s just a bit higher than Mt Lofty. My Lofty’s title is rather more grand in its naming than in reality but the steady incline is just that and it does take a bit of a toll. The track takes me to my favourite walking intersection, one that I visit each day as my various paths intersect here unless I take some really weird detour along the way.

Then it’s home. The last 3km are a bit suburban, through the horse farms but there is a single Highland Cow on the way. It’s one of those shaggy, monster horn varieties that always look delightful although I wander how it goes in the hot Summer days that we inevitably get.

Anyway must go. Have jobs.

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Photos

Janus before he became ‘the dog’.
And yes the infamous blue pack.

The obligatory kangaroo shot.
Usually they hop away before I can get the camera ready.