Travelling Pathetically - Wetlands Edition

 My puffin interrupted me in the middle of planning my next walk.

"What are you doing?  And what the hell are those things?"

"This," I announced flourishing exhibit A in one hand, "is a map of the local area.  The other is a pair of compasses.  I'm attempting to measure out a ten kilometre distance I can walk from my home."

"Or," suggested my puffin with a smartarse grin, "you could just look online."  It hopped up next to my computer and tapped out a couple of keystrokes with its beak.  True to its word a map of my local area appeared with a shaded circle indicating the limits I was currently permitted to travel.  My puffin exuded an air of unbearable smugness or at least it did until I impaled the little bastard to the wall with a pair of compasses and set out on my walk.

I measured the distance with painstaking care.  While my journey might be longer than ten kilometres a straight line from my home to my destination would be within the limit, just.  In keeping with the random greenery (usually associated with water) motif of these walks I would be walking through a series of parks, nature reserves and random bits of scrub that people hadn't got around to building on yet.  I would start at Wolli Creek and head south.  After a certain amount of suburb crawling I would (I hoped) encounter some wetlands and a creek that would take me towards San Souci.  The word "towards" is very important here.  San Souci is just outside the ten kilometre radius from my home so I would actually have to stop a couple of hundred yards from my putative destination and turn back if I didn't want to have COVID related hell rained down upon me.

Just getting to Wolli Creek was difficult enough.  I hopped off the train at Sydenham and was promptly accosted by police who demanded to know why I wasn't huddling under my bed in virus induced terror.  I didn't think it was wise to say that the last time I did that my puffin and platypus didn't let me out for a week so I just muttered something about exercise and they reluctantly let me proceed.

Wolli Creek is, of course, the centre of Sydney's vibrant Mongolian community.  I didn't know Sydney had a Mongolian community but apparently we do and its located at Wolli Creek.  Despite the deep personal connection I feel with the Mongolian peoples I had other things on my mind and headed to Discovery Point Park to start my walk.  This park was originally the grounds of a private home of some prominent local citizen who decided that what was really needed in this area was a half hearted attempt at classical Greek architecture.  There's even a small pile of rocks called Mt Olympus.  It is implied that you can climb Mt Olympus but unfortunately dogs are forbidden from that sacred place and it seems like they just decided to extend that to humans as well because the place was hidden behind locked gates.  I wasn't bothered, any gods living at the top of that would be of the distinctly low rent variety and besides this was a starting point, not a destination.

The aforementioned home now open to the public should the public have any interest in visiting.

Leaving the park I redonned my mask and strode down the street to the next patch of green, Cahill Park where I could stroll along the bank of the Cooks River until I couldn't any more.  Once fate and architecture intervened I once again returned to the suburbs until I came to well it wasn't exactly a park.  Kogarah Golf Course had been built and the M5 freeway had been built parallel to it and in between the two was a thin strip of land which was obviously too small or too inconvenient to build on.  In desperation a bike and walking track had been placed there presumably for the amusement of those for whom driving and golf are of little interest.  I am such a person and I strolled along in eager anticipation of the wetlands that I was sure would soon be presenting themselves.  The walking track moved off to dip under the motorway but the thin strip of land continued and so did I.  Then the strip of land ended and I discovered a golf course.  The next thing I discovered was an international airport.  Finally I discovered that the golf course ended at a creek that I couldn't cross without swimming and I had to retrace my steps.

This may look like a charming piece of nature but its actually a water hazard

And the aforementioned international airport

Feeling a little foolish I retraced my steps and followed the path where it dipped under the motorway.  It was just as well that I did so because I crossed under the motorway and walked into a wetland.  A sluggish creek oozed gently between the trees who, perhaps encouraged by the easy going nature of the stream had extended out a little into the water.  I was literally standing under a motorway as I looked over it.  It was good that I did so because it was the closest I would get to a wetland for a while.

I took this photo from underneath the M5 east motorway which is directly above my head

The reason for this enforced divorce from all things wetlandy is because the wetland is fragile and is being restored.  Restoration consisting of not actually digging it up and trying not to pump as many pollutants into it as we used to.  This does seem to be working, at least on a modest level.

Instead of strolling through the wetland which would have been environmentally harmful and hard on my shoes I instead walked up Eve Street which borders the strip of trees which in turn border the wetland.  Happier times were coming because Eve Street petered out at round about the same time as a path started snaking through the bush and now genuinely surrounded by trees I could push on through something approximating nature.

Something approximating nature

For someone as ignorant of nature as myself the approximation was perfectly satisfactory.  There were even bits of water which, if they didn't count as wetlands, certainly counted as damplands.  

Definitely damplands

The bush came to an end at a road but the path started up again on the other side and now I was in genuine wetlands.  Or at least I was wetlands adjacent.  The path was muddy and the place stank like an open sewer.  This probably means it was wetlands or maybe an open sewer.  A sign optimistically proclaimed the former.  The same sign also pointed out the importance of the area to migrating birds.  They must have been still migrating because there didn't seem to be any around.

Wetland, dampland or heathland.  One of those

I carried on across what now resembled somewhat soggy heathland.  There were grasses and shining pools of water undisturbed by the presence of birds.  Before I could get used to it though I was back among trees ploughing my way slowly but steadily south.  Then I came across Eve Street.  For a horrible moment I thought I had walked in a complete circle but a quick check of google maps assured me that Eve Street dropped in and out of existence like a non perennial stream.

Recharged I set forth once more now walking across what was essentially a park alongside the appropriately named Muddy Creek. Eventually this path spat me out on to West Botany Road that would be my somewhat less inspiring companion for the next part of my walk.  I clumped along unforgiving concrete hoping that my half remembered view of the map before I left my apartment hadn't been wrong and I would be able to leave the road again soon.

Finally I took a hard left at the UFC Gym and wound up in Rockdale Bicentennial Park.  Eschewing the trimmed grass with a sneer I plunged towards the ragged grouping of trees which I, correctly, surmised concealed a water way.  It wasn't so much a waterway as an algaeway.  The water was a deep rich green.  This may not have seemed terribly healthy but the birds would disagree.  The water teemed with birdlife.  While the wetlands were squatting in an avian free sulk this green stretch of slime was neck deep in birds burrowing through the surface to find the water beneath.

Birds, lots and lots of birds

In my previous blog entry I made mention of the astonishment I had felt on seeing an ibis in a tree.  As if to mock me the branches of the trees around the stream were bent low by the weight of the ibis resting on them.  If there had been any more the trees would have toppled into the water under the combined ibis bulk.  I took photos of course.  I took photos of birds until they were bored and asked me to move along.

Ibis in trees

Not an ibis

Somewhat glutted with birds I moved on.  My time in anything approximating actual bush was pretty much over.  The remainder of my journey lay through well manicured parks and the occasional piece of ill manicured scrubland.  There was still the occasional patch of trees such as the one where I encountered a pair of young teenagers enthusiastically digging a hole in the path.  They greeted me politely and I politely pretended that I hadn't seen their two comrades who had fled into the bush at the sight of my approach.  I didn't take photos of them, I didn't think it would be polite or wise.  

A far better subject for a photo than two young men digging a hole that I'm pretty sure wasn't for a dead body

Part of the the park I was walking beside was an equestrian park which helps explain the below photograph there being no pet food factories in San Souci to the best of my knowledge.  I took a picture of the more photogenic of two horses on offer while the other blew flies off itself in disgust.

Equestrian Park, for use in.

Bado-berong Creek had been my companion for the past twenty minutes or so and now it paused while it gathered its strength for the last run to the sea.  I followed cheering it on until the sea itself was visible through the trees.  Then I stopped.  I had reached the end of my piece of elastic.  One step further and certain COVID death awaited me.  I gave a wistful wave to the sea and turned around and caught the bus home.  Considering how long the walk had taken me I was almost depressed at how quickly the bus covered the ground.

There are few places where Bado-berong Creek looks this good.  This is one of them