The Ridge Walk
Outside
the sky looked black, it was black, not that I had been looking. I had been
asleep, and then someone walked into the room. I woke and remembered ‘we are
going walking today’. I said “hello” or something like that probably in a
slightly asleep voice. Then I got up, dressed, had breakfast, grabbed stuff,
and emerged outside into the darkness. Daddy, Alice and I got into the car; I
switched on the ignition and lights. As I said before it was dark.......it normally
is at five.
I drove us to Lake St Clair all the while the
sky grew lighter and mist could be seen lying in all the valleys around the lake.
We got out of the car and started walking up a spur. The sky got lighter, soon the
clouds became pink and gold. We continued to climb, over our shoulders mist
rose up from the lake.
We
reached the top of the first hill but as often happens there were many more ‘tops’
to go before we really got the very top. Poem I know came to mind as we
climbed, like The Australian Sunrise ~James Cuthbertson, The road not taken ~Robert
Frost, A-Roving ~Victor Daley, The Last Journey ~Vance Palmer, and bits of
others, later I was reminded of Old Man Platypus and The Man From Snowy river ~Banjo
Patterson. We came upon a place where the air was heavy with a beautiful scent
similar to jasmine, we were not sure what plant it came from but it smelled so
amazing! A copse of tall old spotted gums
stood one of the ‘tops’, they stood so straight and tall.
It
had been cool but it didn’t take us long to take off our jumpers. We climbed
higher and higher, over a few more fences, the sun came up properly over some
of the cloud. In one place the hill had cow pats all over the top of it. We stopped
quite a few times to catch our breath.
Eventually
I arrived at the very top and looked down to the hills and valleys on the other
side. Still, ribbon of mist hung above the lake.
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| Can you see the car way down there near the road? I can only see it because I know where it is. |
Next
we were off along the ridge. God’s creation is so amazing and beautiful. We brought
water obviously and quite a bit of food..... Like chocolate, and sandwiches,
and chips. There were a few wallabies (very small wallabies) which went
bounding away at our approach. There were also things like sticky beaks, spikey
plants and (possibly) raspberry viney things that were really good at being
trip hazards. We walked, climbed, walked along. In one place lots of the gums
had been struck by lightning. There were also lots of lichen covered rocks.
Eventually
we decided to head back down. Down is my favourite but up is the way Daddy
likes best. So I lead the way, actually I had been leading some of the time up
too, especially the last bit before the top. We came across a echidna which got
us quite excited, we patted it (terrorised it) at least it will have a good
story to tell its family of its narrow escape, maybe it could even do a blog
post, wait echidnas don’t have blogs do they! We ate some sandwiches made of
chocolate between two milk arrowroot biscuits.
The
place we went down had grass all over it, I ran straight down for a bit but the
vines nearly tripped me multiple times, so instead I zigzagged, well Daddy doesn’t
call it zig zaging (I only go about two meters or less before turning) and he
would probably say I was still running but anyway. I also tried ‘crabing’ which involved going
sideways....fast. The other two got left behind.
We
crossed a creek then walked along a cattle track, some cows came to inspect us
then turned and ran. We rested on some logs and ate the packet of chips. Then we walked on
along a car track now the rest of the way had no slopes excepting one short one.
We
made it back to the car! The sun had not yet climbed fully overhead.On
the way home I saw another echidna which walked across the road in front of us.
I stopped the car and we all jumped out and took photos of us. This echidna was
smaller than the one we had seen earlier and not so hidden, I would unroll and
peep out but as soon as I clicked the cameras shutter it hid again.
The
walk was a lot of fun, the view amazing and the weather just about perfect.
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