It’s winter – there aren’t supposed to be snakes around

MOGO AREA – JUNE 12 2016
I didn’t bother to put on gaiters because it was winter, snakes aren’t supposed to be out, at least that’s the urban myth.  I was walking along, luckily looking down and there it was, had to be 6 foot long (curled up) and was as thick as my wrist – maybe even thicker! Up until this point, the trip wasn’t even blog-worthy, but now it was!  

The creek is looking nice after being flushed out last week

The ridge was nice and open and quite narrow

But, more of that later … what was I doing at home on a long weekend you might ask.  Well, our walk had been cancelled because Jeff wasn’t well.  But, the rain had stopped, and the weather looked half-way decent so when I woke up on Sunday morning I was feeling a little deprived and wasn’t looking forward to a beautiful day with no-where to go. I waited until 6.30am and then called Jeff to see if he was better and if he wanted to take a run out to Mogo, he seemed to think it would do him the world of good.

So, off we went at the crack of dawn (so to speak).

The aim was to go to an area we’d been to before and see how long it would take us to get to Devil’s Rocks.  We needed to be there by lunchtime (or thereabouts) as I intended to do an overnight walk to the Rocks (and beyond), and I wanted to get there early enough to explore the aboriginal art in the area, so I had to do a bit of a recce first.

The cairn in the middle of the big rock slab, what’s it doing there?

We made reasonably good time, didn’t quite make it to Devil’s Rocks but we were a k away at around 12 noon, stopping to boil the billy a couple of times might have negatively impacted on the available time.  Anyway, we made it to a high point and stumbled across a bloody

big cairn, have no idea what it was doing there, but obviously someone thought the spot was important. (Edit 18/09/20:  I’ve been advised that this is called “Selby’s Cairn”.  Named after Selby Alley who was a bushwalker from Newcastle Bushwalking Club, also the man after whom the Selby Alley Hut was named up on the upper Williams River in Barrington Tops.  Interesting, why was it there?)

The Snake – a Red Bellied Black Snake it’s got to be thicker than my wrist

Exiting off the ridge/spur was easy, just steep, the creek at the bottom was lovely

We turned around and started down the next ridge over to see how that was.  The walking so far had been really easy.  We were wandering along minding our own business when I almost trod on that snake, it was huge,  Jeff had just walked right past it, I’m surprised he didn’t tread on it too!  Scared the bejesus out of me.  We stood around (me recovering from the huge burst of adrenalin) and took a few photos of The Snake, it didn’t even move, didn’t look at us, just sat there.  It wasn’t even in full sun, but was obviously cold, otherwise it would have high-tailed it through the grass.  As much as I loved that ridge, am not all that keen to go back now.

Lemons galore

After I’d recovered we continued down the ridge/spur, it was nice and open and we dropped down into a side creek which was also easy going.  We eventually got to Mogo Creek and I suggested we climb the bank up onto the flat flood plain, Jeff didn’t think it was that great an idea until we popped up on top and there it was The Lemon Tree.  We would have missed it if we’d gone any further downstream.  The tree was laden with lemons, I picked half a dozen, now I have some bush lemons to go with my Coronas.  Last time we saw The Lemon Tree it only had lemons that the galahs and cockies had pecked at.

We continued on our way and picked up the old “road” that had been used to get to the site of The Lemon Tree (probably an old farm at one time).  We were back at the car by 4pm, wasn’t a huge day but we’d had a bit of a workout.  I laid in bed that night and could barely get to sleep thinking of how close I’d been to treading on that snake!

So, now I know that we can easily make Devils Rock with heaps of time to look at the art before heading down to our campsite (which I haven’t been to before but I’m sure there wont be a problem – famous last words!).

For Dad: Our route for the day