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Published: September 14th 2009
DAY 310
Introduction:
Hi followers of Kangaroojack’s Australian adventures, may we first apologise, about the title of today’s blog, but I am doing this in the aid of a bit of research or fun really.
I have started to read the complete blog again whilst here in Cairns, as we are living a bizarre existence, fun for sure, but just a bit bizarre and you tend to forget things, people and places way back on the adventure, so I thought it would be a great idea to read every blog entry again, just to refresh my poor old memory.
As Kangaroojack is our blog we get to see all the statistics, like how may words we have written, how many entries, number of website hits etc. however I was fascinated to see that one certain blog entry “Little India” has had 396 hits and is the highest hit scorer so far, but other blog entries that I think are better have had nowhere near as many hits so this got me thinking about how this blog entries are found on the internet, if you access them via a search engine like Google for example. I accept that
Barron Gorge N.P
The start of our daylittle India, day 3 (11 Nov 2008) of the adventure but I wondered if it was because of the title that had the word India in it.
Now Caroline and myself work really hard to make sure the blog is an accurate account of our day, obviously trying to make it entertaining for anyone reading it, but a true refection non the less without any Bull Sh*t in it to make it seem better than actually what happened, whilst there has been a few occasions where things were purposely left out so we did not offend or upset anyone, which we have never set out to do.
Finally we always try to give each blog entry a great title associated if we can with what happened on that day, take for example day Blog Day 131 18 Mar 2009, we played mini golf that day, so we called it “Hits & Giggles.”
So the social experiment goes like this, we have given the blog a title (Nasa The Space Shuttle), as they are both topics that I think would be searched a lot on the World Wide Web. We know how many hits it would be expected
to get, so I just want to see if it does, get more than it should.
So the real name of today would have been called, “The only thing left to say would be Wow!!”
We got up this morning with our walk on our mind, It was Sunday morning and we had a couple of idea’s of which ones we wanted to do but eventually settled on the other half of the walk we did the other day when we started off from Wrights look out at Kuranda, which can be read in Blog Day 307 10 Sep 2009, Take a walk on the Wild Side.
After a light breakfast we put our boots in the car along with all the bits we needed for the walk and drove off to Stoney Creek Road North of Cairns and parked the truck.
With our Barron Gorge National Park map we set off, and did the excellent Stoney Creek Garndal Garndal Weir track, which was only a kilometre each way, and ended as the map said at the weir, it wasn’t a difficult track except for the very loose rocks as you scrambled up, but when you
got to the Weir it was just lovely, we passed about 6 young girls walking back the other way, who we said good morning to, and we guessed they had been swimming in the top weir pool, Caroline put her hand in and said it was cold even though the days temperature would have been around 30 degree’s, still not as cold as some of the pools we have swum in back in WA.
We had started our walk at exactly 11.15 and by the time we had got back to the start of the Barron Gorge walk it was 12.15, so off we set again in a different direction up the Douglas Track, in now what was getting to be quite a warm day. However despite being a warm day we were thankful for the shade from the rainforest.
Our first leg was 2.6 K.s following the route of the old historic railway construction track, traversing the face of Stoney Creek Gorge, eventually we see a huge granite boulder with a Milky Pine tree next to it, what is so unsual? They are both being embraced by a huge Strangler Fig, this actually marks the remains of
Caroline's Off
To a good start for the day the historic railway construction camp.
Birds drop the Strangler Fig seeds onto branches, the seed germinates and sends roots down to the forest floor, over time the roots merge and encase the trunk of its host tree, the Strangler Fig shades its host and eventually the host dies, the Strangler Fig stands high embracing a rotting tree. Some of these roots are huge.
The walk continues up to an overpass rail crossing, but when we arrived we were amazed to see this new Galvananised steel bridge with a set of stairs on the other side which takes you to the bottom of the switch back.
Nothing could have prepared us for this stage of the walk, the switch back was steep in places with humps in the path to walk over, it certainly got our blood pumping, its was up, up up all the way and the views just seem to get better and better.
We finally got to the top of the switchback where we found a sign to say the other track was closed, not being certain if this was the one for Glacier rock and the mere fact we wanted to find some
shade from the blazing sun so that we could have some lunch, we walked on a little bit further.
About 100 meters on, we came to another sign board saying that it was only 1.2k’s to the Glacier rock, and as it was nicely in the shade we decided to have a 10 minute stop, a sandwich then go and do Glacier rock as it would be a 2.4k return and probably and hour, so after a drink, sandwich and a handful of cashews we were off again.
This part of the track in fact meets up with McDonald track that Caroline and I did last Thursday, so this really completes one section of this part of the Barron Gorge National Park.
Heavens above this track was steep, I was puffing and panting, but we see about 6 young boys running down the track, we stand to one side to let them go, they were not concerned by the tree roots, the loose rock and the vines that take over the track, they are all polite and say “Hello and thank you” as they race past us. We got to the top in about 25 minutes and
when you looked out through the trees, the only thing left to say was WOW!! What a view, I didn’t think we would have been that high, everything in the distance just seemed so far away, so admiring the view we caught our breath and were off again, downwards.
Getting back to the sign where we stopped for a brief drink we took another breather, a couple of women were about 100 meters in front of us with numbers of the tops but we took no notice.
We got back to the electricity Pylon which was the start of the descent to the bottom, it was 14.55 and we set off down the switch back ending up at the steel steps which we carefully negotiated, strangely enough Caroline doesn’t like structures like this, she doesn’t mind coming down them but hates going up.
Half way down the stairs I was aware somebody was behind me, turning round two blokes and a girl were bearing down on us so we moved over and let them go, they too had numbers on their shirts and told us they were in a race and it was the 2nd time they
had been up the mountain today.
With the railway bridge crossing done, we were on the home stretch, I needed to be back for 4.30 as I was going to Skype my Mum, we had pre planned the time and didn’t want to miss the opportunity.
We see plenty of walkers on the way up, we stopped to let one group pass us, they said that they wanted to stop and let us pass them, Caroline suggested that they should keep the momentum going to make it to the top, they puffed past with a smile or was it a grimace? We made the final descent in 55 minutes which wasn’t too bad seeing as it took us 1.45 To get to the top where we had had our lunch.
We got to the truck at 15.50 and we were just dying to get our boots and socks off and get our thongs back on to let our very hot and tired feet cool down.
In to the truck and we were off back to Bayview as we hadn’t got time to hang around and pulling in to the drive I had 10 Minutes to spare.
On the way back we worked out that we had walked 9.6k’s, which we thought was quite a good effort for today.
Exactly at 7.30am UK time I Skyped Mum, it was great to talk to her, and all was well, we talked for 15 minutes I felt happy that she seemed in good spirits and was well.
We sat down and had a jolly good rest and a well deserved cup of tea after our walk, I said to Caroline that I thought It was one of the most enjoyable walks I have ever done, and she asked if I had enjoyed it more than the gorge walking in Karijini, which I think I did.
It was soon evening and the blog had to be typed, Caroline said that she would do it on her lap whilst watching the Bourne Supremacy, when I type the blog I need quiet and I wanted to watch the film.
We had had an excellent day, It was certainly a tough walk, but we did it, slowly may be, but we did it.
So until tomorrow bloggers.
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Darryl and Sarah
Wallaby Wanderers
We googled your blog title..
... but it didn't come up on page one for us but we've hit it twice anyway! We googled our 'National Geographic Boobs' titled blog just out of interest and that does come up on Google's page one and it is our biggest hitter so far! Maybe it is 'all in a name'?! love from all at the WW's camp!