Well good walks

It’s been a couple of weeks since the golden circle, which I revisited this weekend to find slightly less golden but equally as amiable. It’s a good idea to get the walks in, at least some recompsense for the lack of weekday sunlight on the face and counteracting some of the recent excess of food. A potentially fatal combination of visitors and events over the last week have probably knocked a couple of years off my life, bringing wonderful excesses of chocolate, coconut cream, hollandaise sauce, steak, pork, beef, blue cheese topped burgers, bacon, chips, coffee, calamari, sushi and sandwiches. The irony that all this was topped off with a discussion group on eating fruit and vegetables.

Luckily at this point I don’t think I’ll qualify for the Biggest Loser, though there is still a trip to Europe to come which may add weight to that possibility. For now, rotundness is kept at bay by activity, and wallking up mountains may have helped. OK, it was Anzac Day weekend so there were a few Anzac biccies, but these were a simple reward for tramping oop ill and oover dale in quite bracing temperatures on the rooftop of Australia.



With my housemate Alex and Rear Admiral Davis in tow, the first walk was a rather simple affair, a warm up to acclimatise and get used to the terrain. A walk through boggy alpine moss and snow gums, up to some granite boulders looking out over the Thredbo Valley. A chance to suss out the landscape, scope the business environment and plan for tomorrow and beyond. With darkness falling, there was little more walking to be done and so we retired to our digs in Jindabyne, complete with beer and steak and an episode of Underbelly, and a 24 hour service station that shut at 9.

After overnight rain, the next day brought with it stunning blue skies and crisp clear air. The aforementioned overnight rain had been overnight snow at the highest levels, with a few residual bits and pieces in evidence at Charlottes Pass and dotted in shady pockets of the Main Range. The wet stuff had also heighted the level of the Snowy River, a slight complication given the walk we were on required a certain river to be crossed. Icy water on bare feet not so good. Sense of adventure excellent.

The Snowy River represented the lowest point of this particular jaunt, the track rising quite steadily for a few kilometres, offering views across the very un-Australian landscape, no beaches or warmth or majestic white gum trees in sight, just a barren, stretch of buttongrass and marsh and gentle mountain ridges. A place for intrepid explorers and mighty mountain men and people just masquerading as intrepid and mighty.



At Blue Lake food was on the menu once more, nothing fancy this time, but a ham sandwich just as welcome. And one of the more scenic locations for lunch, though if this was in the land of civilisation, the patio heaters would be expunging greenhouse gases very regularly and there would be some nice warming coffee to nourish the soul. But a beanie and some cold water from an icy metal bottle would have to do instead.

Now many of history’s most momentous occasions have been shaped by paper scissors rock. It was around during the French Revolution when Jean-Luc Chamborissinimentilly tried to steal some fromage from Pierre Petit-Beurre. Winston Churchill always went for scissors, but that was okay because Hitler always thrust his arm out to reveal paper. The Berlin wall crumbled under the rock fisted fury of the Hoff. And so it was, thanks to some timely scissor intervention that three intrepid walkers pushed on up into the blue sky towards the summit of Mount Carruthers.

Just a few tens of metres lower than the highest point in Australia (which itself was further along the sweeping ridge of the Main Range), good ol’scissors delivered us some spectacular views across the characterstic blue ridged wilderness of the high country, the landscape dipping and folding continuously into the horizon. Magic.





It really was all downhill from that, the return walk more like a pleasant afternoon amble, the conversation flowing and the sun and sense of achievement warming. Good times, the three of us like a distorted vision of Clarkson, May and Hammond without wheels and slightly less ludicrous hair. Time for ideas to flow and blue sky to permeate all, time to get back to the Snowy River and cross it without getting the feet wet, time to climb back up that awfully steep ending to the car park and watch as time passed from day to night on the drive back to Canberra. And time for takeaway to see us through to the end.

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This weekend has brought with it walks considerably less dramatic, well suited to a mood of quiet relaxation and healthier eating. A simple Saturday morning stroll from home to the markets in Fyshwick, through the hood of Narrabundah, was surprisingly endearing. The knowledge that I was stocking up on veggies and not using a car to do so gave me that initial inflated sense of worth, but it was eclipsed by the simplest suburbanity of people raking up scrunchy fallen leaves into huge piles, dogs and their walkers stopping to have a chat with me, kids on bikes scrambling across front yards and half hearted footy playing in the oval. Narrabundah has its rough edges... ramschackle fibro homes, sofas and veranda combos, utes and more utes, but it is the sense of community which trumps it over the more refined, stale, public servant crammed apartment land of nearby burbs.

Sunday morning’s stroll was not so much a walk amongst nature or the leafy suburbs, rather a walk back in time, and slightly on the weird side. It’s that time of the year where a small village in NSW celebrates the extraordinariness of the humble pumpkin, bringer of scones and soup and pumpkin pie. Country music plays over fields of sheep and straw, a bucking bronco is available for party hire, quilting displays adorn the church and in the village hall, everyone’s favourite grandmothers beaver away in a frentic melee of tea making and washing up. Simply charming.

And so we come to the last walk of the varied tour, a simple late Sunday amble down beside the lake, a final chance to soak up the weekend and yet more flaming galahs and flaming trees. I think all this walking is making me hungry again...