Travelling Pathetically - Semi Professional Edition

 I was speaking with my Tasmanian correspondent the other day.  God knows why, each of us must have hit a personal low at the same time.  To fill in the increasingly awkward silences I regaled her with tales of my previous walk that had involved me scrambling frantically up the trackless heights of Padstow.  For context at this point I should note that my correspondent is used to traveling the wilds of Tasmania on foot with nothing but a toothpick which she uses to catch and kill her prey.  When I got to the end of my tale of woe she laughed.  When she finished laughing she laughed some more.  Eventually a lack of oxygen brought her hysteria to an end and red faced and gasping she made a couple of suggestions.

The most practical of her suggestions (other than just locking myself in my apartment and never leaving again) was that I download an app that had bushwalking trails on it and a map that actually had contours so that I could tell if my path was suddenly going to get a little vertical.  She carefully coached me on which app to get, I wrote down the name and then downloaded something else.  Nevertheless it has bushwalking trails and contour lines so I'm considering it a success.  With my new travel tech nestled in the bosom of my phone I decided to put it to the test by hopping across the Georges River which had been adjacent to my previous weeks travails and following a fire trail that said app assured me existed.  Giddy with excitement at my new contour enhanced guide I set forth.  Possibly I should have taken more of a look at how close some of those contours were together.

But before I could plunge into the well contoured bush I would have to get to Alfords Point a suburb on the southern bank of the Georges River.  This wasn't as easy as it sounds as accessibility isn't Alfords Point's most pressing problem.  The suburb appears to be carved out of bush on a headland fronting onto the river but for reasons which might be aesthetic but are more likely to be geological a fringe of bushland still surrounds the suburb on three sides.  I actually had to get a bus past it and then double back along what seemed like pretty much the only access road.  

Mill Creek fire trail (and by extension, Mill Creek) borders Alfords Point on its western side.  This was my destination or rather my starting point and I traipsed up suburban streets in the hot sun to get there.  Along the way I saw a guy in an anarchy t-shirt washing one of the three late model cars in his driveway.  Fight the power brother! 

As is frequently the case the entrance to the bushland was rather low key.  I walked down a street equipped with houses, cars, well trimmed lawns and all of the usual accoutrements of suburbia until I came to a somewhat scrubby patch of trees and realised I had arrived.  My handy app noted that the walk was about eight kilometres but that was for a return trip.  However now that I was on site the app also provided evidence of various other trails leading further on.  I would do eight kilometres I decided but I wasn't going to retrace my steps.  I would come to the end of the fire trail and press on along less famous tracks.  The fact that said tracks seemed to peter out after a while didn't bother me, after all I could always turn around.  At this point you're probably preparing yourself for another tale of disaster, well I'm sorry to disappoint you because it all worked out perfectly.

The start of the trail.  I'm hardly forcing my way through the bush

I set off along the fire trail.  It may have been named after Mill Creek but that was more because "Mill Creek Fire Trail" sounds a little better than "the Back of Random People's Houses Fire Trail".  The creek was of course at the bottom of a gully whereas the fire trail clung to the side rather near the top.  Wanting to at least see the creek that had given the firetrail its name I struck out down one of the side paths indicated by my app despite the fact that the contours clustered together a little closely for comfort.  Here I learnt something else about my app.  The moment I left the trail I had noted I was walking on it started making worried comments about the fact that I had left the trail and did I want to make my way back.  I was starting to suspect if I had gone much further it would have called the authorities without any further reference to me.

I didn't quite get down to the creek but I did get down to a rock from which I could take a photo after which I responded to my app's increasingly hysterical requests that I return to the course I had plotted.

Mill Creek

To soothe the app's fevered brow I stuck to the trail for a while photographing the scenery and ambling along what was essentially a dirt road.  The sun shone and through the trees I could hear the sound of dirt bikes in their natural habitat.  Fortunately I must have been on a side trail when they went by.

Trailside scenery

One thing that was noticeable by its absence was wildlife.  Normally I'm beating the lizards off with a stick but on this occasion virtually none presented themselves for my entertainment.  A large spider had somehow managed to build a web across the trail but the photo didn't turn out particularly well.

Can you spot the spider?

A smallish lizard, sorry the best I could do

I made my way along the trail and I have to admit I wasn't enjoying it as much as usual.  It's difficult to imagine you're walking through the bush when you can lie sideways on the path and there is still room for a dirt bike to manoeuvre around you (not that I tried that).  The bush to either side was appropriately photogenic but it was difficult to overcome the feeling that you were walking down an overgrown street.

 

Appropriately photogenic bush

A tree growing out of a cliff

 

Still, I persevered if only because I was worried about what the app might do if I abandoned the walk.  I in defiance of my app I took another side path and this one took me all the way down to the creek.  I eagerly photographed it before it disappeared and made my way back to the trail before the app started screaming.  On the way I found a two cent piece, younger readers ask your parents.  

Now that's a better creek photo

 

Delighted with my creek efforts I then I felt thoroughly stupid as the trail itself started to descend obviously aiming at its own rendezvous with water.  I still feel I was the winner though as the trail merely crossed a very tiny mini creek before proceeding on its way.  I don't know if I was walking through rainforest but I was definitely walking through "it has recently rained forest" and the fire trail became more of a water trail at some points.  

Then the contours took their revenge for my ignoring them.  Having made its way down towards the mini creek the firetrail remembered its responsibility to the houses on the ridge and hastened back up to join them.  I struggled up wishing the trail was narrow enough to shelter me from the sun.  Finally gasping and lathered in sweat I wound up at the end of the fire trail which butted on to a road (because it would be a useless fire trail if it didn't).  I skipped hastily across the tarmac and picked up a path my app had found on the other side.

This wasn't so much a path as an open space between the backs of peoples houses and the bushland below.  A couple of benches were located in strategic places so it was either a park or somebody's backyard.  I took advantage of the rest offered to eat my lunch and consider my next moves.  My app showed a positive tangle of trails leading back down creekward and at least a couple of them popped back up near a road a bit further along.  Decision made I set forth while my app had a nervous breakdown.

These paths were somewhat narrower and definitely more bushwalky and my spirits rose as my elevation sank (I had forgotten about the contours again).  The presence of an increasing number of spiderwebs across the path signalled that I had left the fire trail behind and had entered different territory entirely.  This was a much narrower fire trail.  At least I can't think of many other reasons for the trail to exist.  Navigating by my excellent new app and ignoring is desperate pleas for me to turn around and reconnect with the trail I made my way up Mills Creek

A much better path

From being quite broad, as creeks go Mills Creek had now reverted to the water gurgling over rocks style beloved of creek purists such as myself.  Let's face it a broad creek is just a shallow river.  The path obligingly crossed the creek.  Well it would be more accurate to say the path ended at the creek and another path started on the other side.  Crossing without getting your feet wet was up to you.  Fortunately the aforementioned rocks assisted in this.  Just to prove this wasn't a fluke the path jumped back and forth across the creek a couple more times demonstrating a level of indecisiveness I'm not keen on when I'm relying on it to ultimately lead me back to civilisation.

Now that's a creek

And another of those photogenic red dragonflies

I photographed another bright red dragonfly and was feeling very pleased with myself when I suddenly encountered an electric blue dragonfly flitting through the leaves.  Sadly the damned thing wouldn't stay still long enough to photograph.  I waited quite while in hope but decided to leave before somebody other than my app reported me missing.

After that the contours reasserted themselves and the path wound tortuously uphill while I dripped enough sweat to start a creek of my own.  On I struggled telling myself I was getting fitter and not inadvertantly killing myself.  As I reached the top I had another problem.  According to my app the trail came to an unceremonious end a couple of hundred metres ahead.  I was aware of this but there was also a body of water shown so I figured I could walk to the "lake" and then if need be, retrace my steps.  I forced my way forward, the path was now very narrow indeed and had water running along it.  It might have been a creek.  Then the path ended and a couple of paces forward told me why.  Stretching ahead of me the land rose and fell only to rise again; I had blundered onto a golf course.  The "lake" was actually a decent sized water hazard.

 I spent the next twenty minutes wandering around the golf course in an increasingly desperate attempt to find the exit.  Apparently the owners are concerned that if they make it too easy to leave people might never come back.  Finally a friendly native pointed me in the right direction and didn't ask awkward questions like why a sweat covered individual with a day pack and hiking boots was wandering around a golf course.  I was actually very glad to get out of the bush at this point.  Just as I got onto the golf course the first rolls of thunder started and I was pleased to have ended my walk before the rain began (it rained for all of thirty seconds before giving up but by that time I was in an uber on my way home).  I informed my app that I had finished which at least stopped it from from pestering me to get back onto a fire trail now several kilometres in my rear.