Kangaroo Carpet

The plan was simple: to visit a national park that we'd never seen before, to shake some city dust from our heels exchanging it for country dust, and to have a look at a particular Aboriginal rock art site. What we hadn't counted on was the amount of Australian wildlife we'd come across.

At the Visitors' Centre at Namadgi National Park south of Canberra the very helpful staff recommended The Yankee Hat Walk as an introduction to the park. I wondered if my Yankee accent had anything to do with this choice. In any event the promise of seeing the rock art and so many Eastern Grey Kangaroos that the fields would look like "a moving carpet of grey" sold us. We were told that the area had "the highest concentration of Eastern Grey Kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) anywhere in Australia". 

Eastern Greys are anything but rare here in Eastern Australia but we never tire of seeing them. Like deer in the Northern Hemisphere, they're always fun watch as long as they stay out of the headlights at dusk. And, speaking of deer, a male kangaroo is a "buck" and a female is a "doe". The young break the pattern by being "joeys" instead of "fauns".

We drove south to the beginning of the walk and found only one car in the carpark at the beginning of the track. A good sign. It was a family of three with bicycles---not a bad way to do this track because it's mostly flat, across fields that had once been a sheep station. The distance to the rock art site is only three kilometres, an easy two and a half hours on foot, there and back.

Not quite a kangaroo carpet but a sizeable mob.

Minutes went by and no kangaroos. Then there was one. And then another. Suddenly we passed a mob (no, the collective noun isn't a "court") of thirty-eight kangaroos. Within the first half hour we saw between one and two hundred. The next time we have friends visiting from overseas and they're not content to see kangaroos at Taronga Zoo, we'll bring them here. We had just happened upon kangaroo heaven.

This young male lost interest in me as I fiddled with my camera settlings.

These were more attentive.

This big male was more interested in his friends and family.

Jill is studiously ignored the encroaching grey carpet.

An echidna waddled across our path. It curled up like a hedgehog when I tried to take its picture but patience paid off and soon its eyes and ant-eating snout reappeared. (Click) Echidna's, along with platypuses, are egg-laying mammals.

Echidna

Another iconic bit of Australian fauna happened by but this one, a big goanna, was not for touching. They're not venomous and not aggressive but they can bite and, when they do, they hang on---forever.

Goanna.

The major species of kangaroo, including the Eastern Grey, are anything but endangered. Their principal predator was the Tasmanian Tiger (aka Tasmanian Wolf) which died out on the mainland about 2,000 years ago and in Tasmania sometime last century. Since then the main predator has been the dingo, the wild dogs introduced by Aboriginal Australians three to four thousand years ago. We didn't see any dingoes but we did see the remains of one of their meals.

When dingo meets kangaroo.

We also didn't see any wombats because they're mostly nocturnal. What we did see was wombat holes and plenty of what we think was wombat scat on top of rocks and logs. Wombats aren't ones to hide their lamps under bushels or their excreta in out of the way places. These animals are truly proud of their poo. Or maybe it wasn't wombat poo that we were seeing. Wombat poo usually comes out square. (Don't ask how.) If you recognise the poo in the picture below, please leave a comment. (We promise it's not ours.)

Essence of wombat?

Finally we came to Yankee Hat Rock Shelter, which we had all to ourselves. The "shelter" is a concave rock face with just enough overhang to protect its paintings from the weather.

Yankee Hat Rock Shelter

The art itself only occupies a small area of about two square metres. The photo below shows about two thirds of the artwork on the rock face so there's not a lot there.

These are the rock paintings.

Below I've attempted to label the figures according to what the National Park people think they represent. Nobody really knows. The images undoubtedly had ceremonial significance but their true meaning may only have been known to the initiated and, even then, their interpretation may have varied with the level of those initiated.

This sort of artwork is rare in this area. There is evidence that there were Aboriginal people in the Canberra region from about 21,000 years ago and there is further evidence that there were people camping near these paintings a long ago as 3,700 years but when these were painted is unknown. They may have been painted and re-painted over many years. The white pigment is clay and the red is ochre, perhaps coming from trade with other Aboriginal people nearer to the coast.

There's a fascination with this sort of artwork that's hard to explain. We can't look at them the way we might with a Western modernist painting such as the works of Pablo Picasso*, Joan Miró or Jean-Michel Basquiat. In other words, they can't have been acts of individual self-expression because there are cultural similarities with other Aboriginal art in Eastern Australia. And their painting is not nearly as polished as much earlier Neolithic cave art from Europe, for example, the bison and deer of the Altamira Cave in Spain. Maybe it's the mystery that moves us: who were these people and why did they paint these images? In any case, we were much moved by what we saw and, after a picnic lunch at the shelter, we picked our way back through the kangaroo carpet and drove to Canberra.

* While putting in the link to Picasso I learned that he was born Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. I just thought I'd mention that.

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Still on the subject of bushwalking: a couple of weeks ago I did The Grand Canyon Walk walk in the Blue Mountains with my walking mate, Richard Tulloch. It's one of my favourite walks in the Blue Mountains. As usual he beat me to a blog about our walk. All the better because his photos are invariably better than mine. Because I've had some feedback from his blog I'd like to state---partly for legal reasons---that I strenuously deny being the "Shifty" in Richard's (highly amusing) write-up.

In the Footsteps of Charles Darwin

In 1836 Charles Darwin, then 27, and sailing around the world on HMS Beagle, docked in Sydney. From there he made a side trip to the Blue Mountains and over the ranges to Bathurst. On the way he and his guide stopped on what is now the Great Western Highway and walked along a track to look out over the Jamison Valley. As he wrote in his diary:

About a mile & a half from this place there is a view, exceedingly well worth visiting. Following down a little valley & its tiny rill of water, suddenly ... an immense gulf is seen at the depth of perhaps 1500 ft beneath one's feet. Walking a few yards farther, one stands on the brink of a great precipice. Below is the grand bay or gulf, for I know not what other name to give it, thickly covered with forest. The point of view is situated as it were at the head of the Bay, for the line of cliff diverges away on each side, showing headland, behind headland, as on a bold Sea coast. ... The class of view was to me quite novel & certainly magnificent.

The route Darwin took is now named the Charles Darwin Walk and it leads to the top of Wentworth Falls, which even at the time of Darwin's visit, was already a popular tourist attraction. Back then you could only stand and look out over the Jamison Valley but now, thanks to the staff of the Blue Mountains National Park, and all the work they've done constructing walking paths, you can descend the "line of cliff" and walk along it. One thing hasn't changed from Darwin's time: the view over the Jamison Valley is still pristine.


Last week my old friend and fellow author, Richard Tulloch, and I did one of our favourite walks at Wentworth Falls, The National Pass. Starting at the Conservation Hut Cafe at the other end of the escarpment from where Darwin was and, after fortifying ourselves with coffee and scones (with jam & cream) we started off down the track. Ignoring  the Yowie warning sign.

The Conservation Hut Cafe

Yowies are  Australia's answer to the Yeti and Bigfoot. Sadly, we didn't see one. It would have made for an interesting blog entry. Unfortunately Darwin didn't see one either as it would have given his book The Descent of Man that little magic something to keep it in the charts a bit longer.

Beware of the yowie

In any event these men descended to Lodore Falls, Sylvia Falls and Empress Falls on the Valley of the Waters Creek. A group of canyoners were busy canyoning down the creek. We stopped to watch just long enough to be happy to be warm, dry and on foot.

The National Pass Track

The National Pass track traverses the middle of the cliff from the western (Conservation Hut) end to the eastern, Wentworth Falls end. Or the other way around depending on where you've parked. I've drawn a red line on the photo above to show were it goes. If this looks scary, it's really not. The track is well-maintained and the National Park people have made every effort to keep people from unnecessarily plummeting to their deaths. I guess it's in their interests, too.

A paved path---not to every bushwalker's taste

It was a warm day but, considering it's summer here, we were just pleased that we weren't walking in blistering heat. But it is a well-shaded walk and it's been so rainy recently that there was always a bit of cooling spray from above.

Low overhead

A few stretches are better for kids---short ones---than adults.

Richard in welcome shade

Okay so now you wish you were bushwalking instead of staring at a computer screen. You can get to the Blue Mountains from Sydney by car, bus or train and there's all the information you need at the various Park information centres---such as the one in Springwood on the Great Western Highway on the way to Wentworth Falls. There are also excellent guide books. My favourite so far is Blue Mountains Best Bushwalks by Veechi Stuart. For those of you from away, Sydney is just a short plane ride. Just hop on the plane, go to sleep for a day or so and you're here.

The railing does take away some of the fun

A metal lizard climbing a new, very classy, National Pass trail marker

A real lizard, an Eastern Water Dragon, standing in our path

The track has wonderful views out over the valley but, equally interesting, is the variety of plant life on the cliff face. There are a number of plants that grow only the wet rock faces in the Blue Mountains and nowhere else in the world. If I knew anything about plants I'd have included a photo of one.

Wentworth Falls from below

At the other end of the track we arrived at Wentworth Falls. It's a good climb up but there are stretches of metal stairs that make it easy. This is part is a popular walk so it can be a bit of a conga line on weekends.

The upper part of Wentworth Falls

Once on top of the Falls the trip was only half over. From here we again traversed the cliff line on the Overcliff Track back to the Conservation Hut Cafe and rewarded ourselves for our efforts with a filling lunch. 


Back to Charles Darwin's brief trip to Oz: he wasn't as excited by the fauna here as he had been in the Galapagos because so much of it had already been described. He didn't see a yowie but on his trip to the Blue Mountains he came across other animals that puzzled him. He saw a rat-kangaroo that seemed to fulfil the same function a rabbit does in England. And he saw a platypus that was much like an English water vole. But both were very different in anatomy. In his diary he wondered who one creator would have designed different animals to fill similar ecological niches in different parts of the world. It wasn't an original thought but Darwin eventually pursued it in a way that on one else did. Using this and other evidence he collected on his voyage he wrote a book with the catchy title, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. We know it simply as On the Origin of Species. 


So there you have it: if it hadn't been for a tourist visiting the Blue Mountains years ago we would never have had the Theory of Evolution. QED.

Museum of Fire

These days we're all bombarded with photographs from the internet many of which seem too good to be true. Many of them aren't true. But I can vouch for this one taken on the M4 in the Western Suburbs of Sydney last Friday. No, the Museum of Fire---actually a museum of fire fighting---wasn't burning down but a warehouse nearby was. Fortunately, there were no deaths or injuries.

My good friend and fellow author, Richard Tulloch, and I were driving back to Sydney from a bushwalk in the Blue Mountains when we saw smoke from the fire and then the seemingly-appropriate sign. Sadly our serious cameras were in the boot of the car and there was nowhere to pull over to get to them but I managed to get out my pocket camera (I was driving) and handed it to Richard who snapped this photo. The moral is: always have a camera with you,  especially if you're feeding a hungry blog.

Picos de Europa

While hiking in the Picos de Europa National Park in northern Spain, we didn’t expect to see a Cantabrian Brown Bear, an Iberian Wolf, an Iberian Lynx or a Cantabrian Chamois and it’s a good thing we didn’t expect to because we didn’t. We also didn’t see a European Wildcat, a Genet, a Pyrenean Desman (a little mole-like mammal) or any of the seventy-odd mammals that live in these dramatic mountains. But we did see some interesting birds including Griffon Vultures circling above us.

Our plan was to walk the Cares Gorge hiking trail at a time of year when this very popular walk wouldn’t be a conga line of walkers. So we went in October when it is invariably cold, often rainy and when we’d have the trail to ourselves. As it turned out, it was sunny and hot (none of the locals had seen it this hot in October) but, thankfully, there were very few other walkers.

The young Dutch hitchhiker we picked up on the way into the park said that he spends much of his free time hiking around Europe but that the unique scenery of the Picos keeps drawing him back. Much more dramatic than the Dutch Alps apparently.

The scenery is both spectacular and unique. The Cares Gorge trail is relatively easy but probably not for people with vertigo and no parachute. Sadly, we had to turn back before getting to the end thanks to a heavy cold I’d picked up a few days earlier. One more grudge walk to add to the list but one I can't wait to do.

Even in the wilds of the Picos you're never too far from a cool drink.

Close to nature's heart

"Keep close to Nature's heart...break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." Or so said John Muir, the Scottish-born American writer and conservationist. Having just spend three days doing day-walks in the Blue Mountains, I couldn't agree more.

The days were clear and cool and in the evenings my wife and I retreated---with spirits washed, dried and neatly ironed---to a log fire in a cottage to read and listen to the possums scurring across the roof. Okay so the logs were fake and it was a gas fire but it was still warm and toasty.
We are lucky in Sydney to be so close to so many national parks including: Ku-ring-gai Chase, Royal National Park, Lane Cove National Park, Sydney Harbour National Park and theBlue Mountains National Park where we were. And being there mid-week when it wasn't school holidays, we had it all to ourselves. Much as we love the city, it is good to get out into nature and replace the city's sounds with bird calls. The only high-rises in sight were built by termites.

It was also a good time to try out my new digital camera. Try as I did to get a good photo of a Supurb Lyrebird--and there were plenty of them about---all I managed was one blurry photo. (One of these days I'll read the manual and learn how to use the camera properly.) But, feeling sorry for me, various other birds came by and posed, including some Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and a male and female Australian King-Parrot.

My very own portrait

My good friend and children's book writer Moya Simons is married to a painter named Jules Sevelson. One day, not long ago, Jules asked me if he could paint my portrait. I'd never had my portrait painted before and I was delighted. He asked me what I liked to do when I wasn't writing and I said that I loved bushwalking, especially in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. I sat for Jules twice while he sketched and painted and here's the result. He said he wants to work on it just a bit longer to get the colours right but I think it's already a fantastic painting---and it looks just like me!