roMountain stories…
Loop: the circuit incomplete
The track goes on and up. It is rough and steep, rocky. It’s one of those tracks where you step on a rock and your foot slides out from under you.
We park the minivan in the reserve. The afternoon is more than half way done but we figure there is plenty of time to walk the circuit. We don’t have a map though I had earlier read something recommending the track as a good walk and had briefly looked at the accompanying sketch map. Seems a short walk from what I recall. We set off.
The track trends upwards and takes us into the eucalypt-forested hills that start where the suburbs end and the mountain’s foothills begin. I’ve followed many tracks in my life, climbed plenty of hills, but as we walk on this one seems rather tiresome. Will this up-and-up ever go down?
Well, it does, sort of. It plateaus out and the up-and-up becomes more of an undulation with a little down followed by more up. The thought passes through my mind that maybe this track is a geographical metaphor for life.
The worse of the up done, I start to take more of an interest in the country we walk through. The track takes us through a forest of scattered eucalypts growing from a thin, dry soil from which lichen-splotched grey rocks protrude. Here and there clumps of tall, stiff grass and stick-like plants make up an excuse for an understorey. It seems desolate country. It’s an open forest of smoother-barked eucalyptus with a stringybark stocking spaced far enough apart that they don’t form a closed canopy overhead. I look up and recall a definition of open forest as that with less than 70 percent canopy coverage and more than… what is it?… the 30 percent that denotes woodland?
We walk on and I realise that the map I earlier looked at was perhaps more an illusion. This track, which we thought of as a short walk of maybe an hour or so, is spinning out.
Did we take a wrong turn? No, my partner says. There have been no tracks branching off this one.
Have we taken the right track to start with? Yes, she replies. It was the only track to take. We press on.
This must be the top of the hill, though ‘small mountain’ might be a better name because the land falls away on all sides. The forest here is thinner, the trees smaller. The track swings in a more or less easterly direction.
The day is getting on, I say to my partner. We’re in a reserve. There was a fence and a gate where we drove in. They usually close gates late in the day.
The prospect of a night in the reserve doesn’t phase us because all we need is in the minivan — food, our little bushwalkers’ Jetboil cooker to heat it on, coffee, water, sleeping bags, sleeping space. We would be quite comfortable overnighting here until the council ranger reopens the gate next morning.
What had been a rough stony track becomes a smother path that trends downhill. More or less, I figure, in the direction from which we had come, as if trying to complete a loop. Not long till we’re back, I suggest.
Well, maybe, maybe not. The track seems to be trending away from the direction we are supposed to go. With the late hour, we stop. We have no idea where this track goes, whether it will lead us back to where we started or how long it will take us to get to wherever it is it goes. Did we miss a turnoff that would take us back to the carpark?
Decision follows a brief confab. We turn back the way we came. This, we hope, will get us back before the gate is closed for the night. Nice as overnighting in the reserve would be, we are expected elsewhere.
We follow the rough, stony track and as it trends downward past what looks like a very steep service track. My partner comes up with a brilliant idea — why not follow the service track? It looks like it might be a shortcut, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s a direct route back to the carpark.
Off we go, only to soon realise that if we thought the track up was steep, then how could we adequately describe this one? It is no exaggeration to say that we skid more than walk down. The track surface is nothing more than loose, chunky gravel and rocks that are all-too-happy to move underfoot. I help my partner down some of the more slippery stretches. She’s still suffering a sore hip the result of a slide on Mt Field. And this, so we could avoid overnighting in the reserve.
Through the trees we see it ahead. The end of the track. We step out onto firmer ground. Now, the sign beside the service road makes sense. ‘Track closed’, it warns.
We've it back before the reserve’s gates are closed. Tossing our packs into the minivan, my partner starts the motor, reverses out then drives towards the gate. So, no overnighting in the reserve, I say as I glance at the sign at the entrance. In bold, black letters the notice announces that the council is trialling something new. The gate and the reserve will remain open all night, every night.
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