05/14/2012 by Julie Mundy
So, autumn is here already and I have been busy writing up the final chapter of the Geelong, Bellarine and Brisbane Walks book. I love the rhythm of writing, but autumn is also my favourite walking time – mild days, crisp skies, fresh air with a bit of a bite, glorious colours, and fewer slithering friends to worry about. By June, I hope to be started on the next book, which will cover the Great Ocean Road and the Otways: I can’t wait! I don’t know about you, but sometimes, my feet just itch to get out walking, and when I am wandering along, I think there is nothing more joyous than to be out walking in our beautiful land. My walking buddy, Karen, epitomises this in a way my dodgy knees and hips can’t express: here she is on our recent walk to the Jarosite Headland near Point Addis. So what about you? How does a great day out on the track make you feel?
‘This is how happy walking makes me!’ (Pt Addis in the background).
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Posted in Bushwalking, Coastal Walks, Great Ocean Road, Places to Visit, Walks, Walks with dogs | Tagged Great Ocean Road, Jarosite Headland, National Parks, nature, Otways National Park, outdoors, Point Addis, walking | 2 Comments »
04/30/2012 by Julie Mundy
Late autumn afternoon, Island Track, Brisbane Ranges National Park.
Well, having finally resolved my technology inadequacies, yesterday I managed to persuade my daughter to come for a wander in the Brisbane Ranges, just an hour’s drive from Melbourne to the south-west of Bacchus Marsh. I have no idea how this absolute gem of a place has stayed so ‘undiscovered’ for so long. In just minutes, you can be walking out in pristine bush, with not another person in sight and nothing but the sounds and smells of the bush. We headed up to the Boar Gully campsite, the location for the start of the 3 day Burchell Trail, which traverses a good length of the Brisbane Ranges National Park on it’s way to Fridays Campground. From there, we walked back across Reids Road, along Farm Track and then joined Spring Creek Track in the very North West tip of the Park, and did a series of loops following the contours of the creek below. It was a gentle wander, with just the occasional eastern grey kangaroo thumping through the bush, groves of towering grass trees – some over 2 metres in height – and some impressive bushfire regeneration in the ironbark woodlands. I can’t wait to go back in the spring to see all the wildflowers. Just what I needed to get my mojo back!
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Posted in Bushwalking, Places to Visit, Uncategorized, Walking with Children, Walks, Wildlife | Tagged Boar Gully, Brisbane Ranges, Burchell Trail, bushwalking, eastern grey kangaroo, grass trees, gum trees, kangaroos, National Parks, walking | Leave a Comment »
04/27/2012 by Julie Mundy
Blogpost-waiver: This post is aimed at GPS innocents – like I was, sadly no more!
The Day the GPS Ate Me Up and Spat Me Out
OK, so a lot of you will recall my excitement about setting out with my GPS some weeks ago, despite my aversion to having ‘eyes’ on me when I am out walking in the bush. So, I buried my inner-Luddite and set out to conquer the technology (rather than the other way around!), and there I was happily waymarking my little way along on some key walks. So far, so good. But (and here comes the BUT), come time to download those tricky little maps only to find out that eTrex don’t sell their units with a data cable to download all those wonderful waypoints onto my computer. No problem. Jump online, and in a blink of an eye arrives the specialist little Garmin GPS connector cable for my e-Trex. So far, so easy. Except that the end that is supposed to plug into the computer is a serial port, which no computer built after the Dark Ages has anymore. Back on line, to find out I need to order a serial port to usb connector (are your eyes glazing over yet? Mine were!), so I speedily order that and it just as speedily arrives. Beauty! Ready to go … or not! Next I find out I need to download a tricky communicator plug-in from Garmin so my computer and theirs can exchange idle gosspip. Tick. And usb-driver software. Oops – only they don’t make them for Macs.
Hijack my son’s computer – a PC (serious gamer!) and go through whole palaver again. Click enter and …. no Garmin device recognised. Oh joy. Spend hours aimlessly surfing internet forums looking for advice a non-tech head can actually understand. Little joy. Go to Garmin website – of course, no Australian support listed. Figure out time differences, email UK and USA and get auto-response that they will get back to me in 3 business days. Getting better by the minute. Find An Australian support number on another site and go to call – oops, they closed 7 minutes ago. Go to bed in disgust. Set alarm so can call as soon as they open so not stuck in long queue. Call on the buzzer of 9am and put on hold for 40 minutes. Hoorah. Talk to very amenable service guru who cheerily informs me the unit I have is ancient, the usb converters are unstable and you need a PhD in IT-guru-ology to sort it out, though there’s no guarantee it will work and why don’t I go out and buy the current plug-and-play model?? Deadline for book looming overhead as I contemplate having to rewalk some of the key walks, and am tempted instead to take high-tech hammer to GPS and batter away. Saved by call to wonderful editor, who used an iPhone GPS App on her last book instead of her $1000 GPS with great results. To total shock of my children, go out and sign up on the dot for iPhone, download $4.99 Trails app, push 2 buttons, get out and walk (sanity – yay! Brisbane Ranges came up trumps again), push one more button, map arrives in my inbox, click on it and there it is in google-earth right before my very eyes. And when I compared it to my much adored nostalgic paper map relics which I use every walk anyway – it was pretty well spot on. Faith instantaneously restored in technology and future of the world. Not sure if I won’t suffer flashbacks though!..
Do you have any walking technology horror stories, or is it just me???!!!!
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Posted in Bushwalking, Uncategorized, Walks | Tagged GPS, technology, Trail app, walking, walks | 8 Comments »
04/19/2012 by Julie Mundy
Start of the Oxfam 100km Trailwalk
Tomorrow morning (20th April) sees the start of a marathon walk for lots of hardy (foolhardy?!) Melbourne souls. Teams of 4, 100km, 48 hours to complete. All over Australia, and in fact, in 13 countries worldwide, committed groups of the fit and not-so-fit are setting out to raise money for Oxfam‘s fantastic poverty alleviation projects. Since 1981, the Trailwalker event has raised more than $100 million. Wow! Jen, my walking companion on the Overland Track in Tasmania earlier this year, is on a team with 3 other friends and together they have persuaded sponsors to part with over $10,000. That’s quite an incentive to walk through the night/pain. This year, the Trail will take them through Jells Park – Churchill National Park – Lysterfield Lake – Ferny Creek – Olinda Creek Track – Graham Colling Reserve – Woori Yallock – the O’Shannassy Aqueduct – Warburton. That’s some walk! While these mammoth walks are a long way from the short walks in my books, it’s incredibly inspiring to see people putting their foot power to such good effect. Have you ever participated in an Oxfam or other charity long distance walk? Thought about doing so? What was your experience? What’s holding you back?
……. Here’s the update you’ve all been waiting on: They made it! Jen and her three team mates walked the 100km in just 26 hours and 43 minutes and raised over $13,000 in the process. And with nothing other than some major sore feet and a few blisters. What legends! 
- The Gurner Babies (Melbourne Oxfam Trailwalker 2012)
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Posted in Bushwalking, Walks | Tagged charity walks, Dandenong Ranges, long distance walks, National Parks, Oxfam, Oxfam Trailwalker, walks, Warburton Trail | 7 Comments »
04/17/2012 by Julie Mundy
Old mineral springs well, Clifton Springs beach
It’s now officially autumn, and officially my favourite time of the year to walk – Victoria usually has wonderfully stable weather in March and April – cool nights, crisp mornings, warm but not too hot days and crystal blue skies. With my book due at the end of this month though, I am having to hunker down at home to write, map and organise my photos. However, on Sunday, the weather was just too good, so I used the excuse of researching a walk variation for the Clifton Springs walk, to drag my son and his friend out. The added incentive was hiring a boat from Mike at Clifton Springs Boat Harbour and motoring up and down the coast along the dramatic sea cliffs. Afterwards, we walked along to The Dell, a sunken picnic ground beneath the cliffs, accessible only by steep stairs or the beach at low tide. From there you can wander along the beach to explore the remains of what was once a popular mineral springs and spa complex. In the late 1800′s, people traveled by ferry from Melbourne to take in the waters and purchase water from the bottling plant. Today, you can see old wells, remnants of the curvy thick glass bottles, and most interestingly, the springs themselves, which still bubble up along the beach and seep out through rock pools and the sand. A terrific short walk for families which you could round off with a swim in the shallow waters and a picnic and ball games at The Dell.
Mineral springs bubbling into rock pools at Clifton Springs beach
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Posted in Bellarine Peninsula, Places to Visit, Walking with Children, Walks | Tagged Bellarine Peninsula, Clifton Springs, mineral springs, The Dell, walking with children, walks | Leave a Comment »
04/11/2012 by Julie Mundy
Sweeping views back to Point Addis from the Jarosite Headland
Well, I am down to my last two walks for the Geelong, Bellarine & Brisbane Ranges book, which brought me back to Point Addis along the Surf Coast. I couldn’t believe how quiet it is out here – even in the middle of school holidays we only passed one or two walkers along the Ironbark and Jarosite tracks. The views really are stunning, with the rich reds of the jarosite in the soil absolutely glowing in the afternoon sun,despite the cloud cover.
Tracks are reasonably well sign posted, though the map on the information board at the car park was woefully inadequate and there don’t seem to be any Parks Victoria parknotes or maps to download online either. Hopefully the two walks I will include in the book will help close that gap. While walking here, it is important to stay away from the high cliff edges, as the soft sandstone and jarosite is rapidly and unpredictably eroding and crumbling away.
Seacliff erosion at Pt Addis
We took our two dogs along (both on leads) and it is critical that dogs (and walkers) keep on made tracks and are diligent about using the cinnamon fungus boot wash stations on entering and leaving the park to help prevent the spread of this devastating disease which is destroying large tracts of our beautiful grass trees. A big unexpected bonus at the end of the walk was this fearless Peregrine Falcon, sitting right on the edge of the clifftop, surveying his territory.
I am heading off to Point Danger at the end of the week to complete the walks, then it will be head down and walking boots hung up for a while, to get the walks all written up for the publishers, hopefully with a view to the book being published by August. I have posted the list of planned walks for the new book on its dedicated page.
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Posted in Birdwatching, Bushwalking, Coastal Walks, Dogs, Great Ocean Road, Places to Visit, Walks, Walks with dogs, Wildlife | Tagged Bird watching, bushwalking, cinnamon fungus, Ironbark Track, Jarosite, peregrine falcon, Point Addis, seacliffs, Surf Coast, walking, walking with dogs | 4 Comments »
03/24/2012 by Julie Mundy
View North from Point Addis Clifftop boardwalk
Just past Torquay, and an easy day trip from Melbourne, is a wonderful pocket of bushland which boasts some stunning views from its sea-cliffs. For some reason, which I can’t fathom, Point Addis seems to miss out on most of the tourist traffic, who are focussed on either Bells Beach or heading to Anglesea, Lorne and the Great Ocean Road beyond. However, Pt Addis is a wonderful wild destination in its own right. There is an excellent short Koori Cultural walk with interpretive information boards along the way, or a more challenging Ironbark Basin walk – you can see the distinctive slip of the basin from the main car park – which also allows access to an old jarosite mine site. Finally, there is a great short cliff-top board walk from the main car-park which allows for fantastic views up and down the coast, as well as access down to the beach itself – though take great care even if it is low tide. Despite it being part of the Great Otways Park, dogs are fine as long as they are on leads. An added attraction (depending on your viewpoint!) is that the northern end of the beach is one of Victoria’s only four legal ‘clothing optional’ beaches – don’t say I didn’t warn you!
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Posted in Bushwalking, Coastal Walks, Dogs, Great Ocean Road, Places to Visit, Walking with Children, Walks, Walks with dogs | Tagged Bell's Beach, bushwalking, Great Ocean Road, Jarosite Mine, Nude beaches, Point Addis, sea cliffs, Torquay, walking with dogs | Leave a Comment »
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