Since Laura headed over to Switzerland early to hang with friends, I had another weekend to myself. With the temperature forecasted to hit 36 degrees (97 Fahrenheit), I loaded up the Camelbak, two additional bottles of water and picked up a pouch of jerky en route planning to head up into the Dandenong Mountain Ranges to a unique place called William Ricketts Sanctuary. I picked this destination knowing Laura would have no desire to ever step foot in this place. She is creeped out by weird faced things like clowns, figurines, gnomes, etc. Well this place is a climb up a mountain trail in which William Rickett has sculpted nearly 100 clay Aboriginal guardians of the forest along the ascent. After about a hour and a half drive from the city, I came upon this:
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| William Ricketts Sanctuary. Closed for business. |
The closed gate was accompanied by a sign indicating the storm with 100 km/hr winds and hail that Laura and I sat through in a turbulent plane on the runway had caused signifiant damage to the sanctuary. Shucks!
Fortunately I had a Plan B, but first I thought I'd check out the nearby peak of Mount Dandenong. There's a nice view from the peak, but they've pretty much turned it into a tourist trap charging $5 for entry to where they've constructed a restaurant, gift shop, hedge maze, and what seems to be common for mountain peaks in Australia, a very large chair.
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| View from peak of Mount Dandenong. City of Melbourne in the distance. |
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| Nice looking path $5 per guest pays for. |
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| The large chair at the peak. I'll have to look into what this chair thing is all about. |
Having blown $5 for a nice view, I headed back down the mountain to the base for a 10km bushwalk through the Ferntree Gully Rainforest. This is one of 96 bushwalks detailed in a book titled "Day Walks Victoria" I had recently acquired. Having spent some time perusing the book, I was somewhat disappointed in what appeared to be a generally low level of difficulty throughout the book. Only three routes of 96 are classified as "Hard". Well this trail was "Medium".
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| "Grade: Medium" |
I felt comfortable I was fit enough to tackle it despite the heat. After all, according to the route description the initial ascent "is made easier with concrete steps", and the most menacing language in the rest of the description is "a steady climb".
I had heard people talk about the 1,000 steps, I did not know the steps referred to in the route description were the 1,000 steps. 1.6km later I had reached the top of the 1,000 steps soaked through with a waterfall down my face and a thumping chest. That seemed a bit intense for a medium rating I thought, the rest must be breeze. That was not an accurate assumption. I proceeded for the remainder of the 10km descending and climbing, descending and climbing, and descending and climbing. The grades of both the descents and climbs were of steepness in which they would have been "made easier with concrete steps", but loose gravel made it a nice challenge.
There were a few other items of interest on the walk. One of the ascents was to the peak of another One Tree Hill. Apparently every big city in this part of the world has a One Tree Hill in it's vicinity. This one, like the one in Auckland, was covered in trees. Just seems odd that every city seems to feel the need to designate a hill or mountain peak as One Tree Hill, but to the lay person, the intuitive criterion is not met by any. I also saw a wallaby. Tough to get a picture of an animal in the wild, advantage Bigfoot. And I walked through an area where I was swarmed by thousands of monarch butterflies. I figured out they came out of hiding because of my disturbance and it was still hard to get a clear picture of the quantity of these things. Pretty incredible to scuff the feet and see hundreds of butterflies emerge from the undergrowth.
My calves and quads burned for days afterward. I was glad I was sweating at the end which meant I hadn't completely dehydrated myself, but my car may never smell the same after the return trip. Might hit an Easy-Medium route next time. I'm an out-of-shape pansy.
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| The start of the 1,000 Steps |
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| Still on the 1,000 Steps |
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| Peak of One Tree Hill ... lots of trees |
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| A flat section of the trail |
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| Attempt to photograph the butterflies. Seems you can only see a few, but I assure you there's hundreds. |
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| Ferntree Gully |
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| The other flat section of path. |
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