Perry's Blog

Perry wrote:

Today we have some shopping to do: batteries (the camera eats batteries) and gas, plus [the planned] groceries.
Have I mentioned the noise pollution? Let me add trains. The background noise of the expressway went all night!

Sandi didn't have a great night's sleep:

a comfy night but not much sleep, still one night shouldn't be a drama. It's cool today after the heat of yesterday and lovely to have a wee fire; made necessary by the gas bottle running out.

The clothes are mainly dry except for the socks, so we've put them on the outside of our packs to dry as we walk. The clothes are not looking crash hot, and they certainly aren't smelling great, but we're trying to get all the sweat washed out of them when we can. Not sure they are going to be up to much when we've finished this?

Sandi wrote:

Very grateful for it being cooler, though another hard part at the end of the day, a bit anxious about that. Hard to believe it's Day Five already, it will be tougher now without shops and with harsher camping.

8:40am Left Camp
It was just a short walk down into Brooklyn along an unremarkable track, although you can always find something beautiful in the bush.

Angophora hispida is a long time favourite of mine, one that I've often thought would make a wonderful garden specimen. Here it's displaying its colourful new growth. A little further along the track a wonderful Bottle Brush and Drum Sticks!

A simple and quick walk into Brooklyn, although being so close to a suburban area means that there are lots of tracks, and I'm not entirely sure we took the correct one: though it can't have been too far wrong as we arrived OK!

9:21am Brooklyn
Shopping at Brooklyn was exactly as we expected because we'd been here the previous week, though we wished that they had supplies more appropriate with being a major stop on the Great North Walk. For example: Gas I think it's crazy saying "No Wood Fires" on the walk if you can't buy gas supplies at the towns.

At this point we did a major re-think of our shopping/menu: pulled everything out from our packs, bought necessaries and repacked everything, neat and tidy again. Very satisfying, especially with a real espresso .

The fellow from the grocery store on the wharf said that there was another water taxi available that we may like to try. The fellow who ran it also ran the little cafe/fish & chip shop, so I asked when ordering our drinks. I was not quite ready for his emotional response: He wondered how I could expect him to run the water taxi and the cafe at the same time? I apologetically replied that the grocery man said I may like to ask... sorry.

We rang the other Water Taxi and asked him to pick us up in half an hour, in the meantime we repacked our packs and got rid of our rubbish.

Perry wrote:

Didn't find gas in Brooklyn, which means we'll have to light fires. But we did find frozen sausages and an onion!

We did wonder at one point about staying here overnight. Definitely decided that to stop in the middle and sleep in a bed may have a negative on our determination to keep going. It was wonderful to sit on a real toilet again though (the public toilets are located down opposite the wharf).

10:58am Water Taxi

Perry wrote:

The water taxi was great: really friendly fellow. There was another choice at Brooklyn but he was bound by his fish shop (where we bought coffee and ginger beer).

Quite choppy across to Patonga: I'd forgotten that it'd be open to the sea. Fun riding up and down the swell.

The taxi man had lots of stories about different adventures he'd had on the water with his taxi (well, nor really his I guess). Once he said the waves were so rough that he couldn't see the pier at Patonga for the swell, and he had to disembark his passengers one or two at a time for the short time that the boat aligned with the pier!

It wasn't that rough today.

11:18 Patonga

Patonga sure is a cute little place. We checked out the shop as our last chance to find some gas: none.

We filled up our water bottles from some taps at the park and we were off again. Felt distinctly odd: hadn't walked very much today at all and it was already almost midday.

It's a short walk along the road, then across the beach to the start of the track, which immediately starts with some formed steps.

11:38am Patonga Trackhead

A short stiff climb shocked us out from our lazy morning, and we were duly rewarded with a spectacular panorama across the mouth of the Hawkesbury River.

I'm not sure why, but we followed something similar to the yellow brick road up to Warrah Trig, seemed a bit odd all the way out here.

It wasn't until we climbed down the other side and found the parking lot that we realised that at some point there had been some important function to create this fairly lonely road into this non-working Trig. This raised another question: Are Trig Stations still used in these days of GPS's?

We couldn't immediately answer that question, so we strode out again on a fairly wide road. It's an easy walk up the dirt road that leads us inland toward Patonga Drive. There were great long views across the top of the stunted heath landscape.

I'm not sure why I love this landscape so much, but when this stunted vegetation is in bloom it is the most wonderful sight. For centuries Englishmen have been singing the praises of our wildflowers! Lambertia and Isopogon particularly splendid.

Just before you get to Patonga Drive (a fairly main road at this point) the track turns off into the bush again under some low trees and dappled shade; and runs parallel for a ways until we reach a locked gate to the next section.

Not far into this new area and we found ourselves our first Waratahs: this was really exciting! We'd been hoping we'd find some. Such a striking bush to stumble upon in the bush!

We were walking at a pace, enthusing about the wonderful surprises we'd been granted in the bush when we found our first trail bike riders: not so exciting. They were just young kids and quite considerate really: but all the consideration in the world doesn't muffle the noise. The walking is certainly easy in this section, with a hard packed sandy track.

After wonderful Christmas Bells and Kunzea surprises we'd reached our lunch destination awash in Flannel Flowers!

1:10pm Lunch
Stopped for lunch just off the track a wee bit on some rocks with a bit of a view. Tried to makes sense of what we were looking at, I think we picked out what could have been Mt Wondabyne, but none of it was obvious.

Finally managed to have our preferred Date and Vegemite sandwiches for lunch. We both have Date and Vegemite on work days and thought the mixture of sugar and salt would suit us well walking.

After lunch the walking was pretty easy, if not a little bland, though the landscape was pretty awesome. The track took us beside a low rocky ridge for quite a way. We were hoping to find some water along this part, as there were small streams marked on the map, but we didn't find anything more than swampy ground (in which we could have found water if desperate, but thankfully we're not at the moment).

Climbing a wee hill, we could see what looked like an old rubbish tip to the east; then the track comes out on top of a smoothed-off rocky ridge, where the track is marked only by rock engravings. There were a couple of steep climbs that gave some nice views, after one such climb we looked out to see what we supposed was a hawk hunting at about same height!

The track descends to a road and a slightly confused junction, then heads off up to Mt Wondabyne and our campsite. The road/track runs along the southern side of Mt Wondabyne and was quite swampy in parts, Sundews were growing in abundance here where they gained an advantage in the poor soil conditions.

At this point we'd only been walking just under 5 hours, and if we'd known this was the last hill before camp we may have felt differently about it, but looking up at it it was just a little discouraging... just another hill. Just another time where you have to put your head down and determinedly head up yet another hill.

But then, all of a sudden, we found ourselves in the Camping area: not that there was much supplied, but at least we were here: a seat, a couple of old fire places and a few tent sites under the low trees.

3:55pm Mt Wondabyne

Sandi wrote:

Got to our campsite here in good spirits and it is sheltered enough, though fairly stark with fairly recent fires through. Banksia cones make a lovely coals rich fire. Couldn't get a gas cylinder in Brooklyn, or Patonga, so have to resort to fire.

It was Sandi's turn to SMS our safe arrival to the kids. This system of daily SMS's is working well, have not had any dead patches yet, although we know that Yarramalong is a dead spot.

There was the remains of an old fire place, so we collected a few more rocks to circle the fire a little more and lit some of the charcoaled Banksia cones to cook over.

Perry wrote:

Finally had a planned dates and vegemite on rocks overlooking the walk North. Missed afternoon tea, but dinner was wonderful: sausages, pasta, peas, onion on Turkish bread! When we got into camp we brewed up some coffee (which according to my friend from work, Jeff, is the best thing after exercise). Dinner was cooked over Banksia cones that had been burnt the previous fire - very successful and not much flame but lots of heat.

Overall the day seemed much more successful, certainly cooler - but we managed all the hard climbs without too much difficulty. The view from Mt Wondabyne is neat. And the flowers were amazing: flannel flowers everywhere. And the couple of Waratahs were wonderful too.

The sun is down now and Sandi's just heading to bed. Tonight seems just the opposite of last night - not the luxury of as many cups of tea as we wanted. In fact, tomorrow morning we'll be on thin rations as we'll just use minimum water on the muesli and drink some cold water - then we'll be off. Big day tomorrow - 17kms!!

So ends Day Five where we walked 13 kms at an average of 2.6 km/h and ended up 56kms into our journey.

Tomorrow we'll join part of a track that we have walked previously: it'll be interesting to see how much we'll remember. It'll be a fairly long day.