Hiding in plain sight

GREAT NORTH WALK – SORT OF – 8 December 2021
This was a stunning walk, but treacherous, we probably should all have been wearing helmets, but for goodness sake it was a simple creek walk.  Mind you in this instance a helmet probably wouldn’t have helped.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Janine was leading us on a Wednesday walk, I was hoping for some exercise and wasn’t disappointed, it was a full-body work out.

Janine leading is down an old fire trail, easy walking until we got to the steep bit!  Mind you we stopped just after this and stood on the track, that’s when I found all the LEECHES!  I had drenched my feet in Vicks Vapour Rub and sprayed Aeroguard on my shoes and socks, but still the bloody things thought they could pay me a visit.

Accessing our first creek, almost as soon as we got off the track, the rocks were very, very slippery. When Janine had done the recce for this walk a month ago, it was in a dry period, a few weeks of rain and it was a whole different ball game.

After 15 minutes we arrived at the first of our creeks, very, very pretty.

Walking upstream and we are in full rainforest under-story, dark and damp. It was a cloudy day but after walking for an hour or so I was drenched in sweat!

Half a section of “canyon” formation with a pretty pool.

The mossy rocks were so treacherous that you had to be super careful wherever you put your foot down – and I was wearing the wrong shoes!

We soon came to a lovely slabby ledge section of the creek and found a “monkey rope” vine that Peter and Brad played Tarzan with, no-one was hurt thankfully!

Not long after playing Tarzan, Peter slipped on a rock and hit the ground (rock) with his chin, lots of blood! We tried staunching the flow but the cut was in a position where you couldn’t close it effectively. We had a few stops after this to change dressings.

I had been taking a few “high level” detours to avoid the slippery rocks, I wasn’t wearing a helmet and felt that it was just too risky for me to be down amongst the lovely mossy rocks.  It was definitely easier up on the slopes rather than in the creek.  I did miss the best parts though – but better safe than sorry.

By now we’re in the second creek system which we were to walk up to get back to our cars. This was really stunning, but as I said, a full body work out – at times I couldn’t walk on the slope (too steep) so had to get back into the creek.

After an hour or two of more creek walking, the rest of the team decided that it was too tedious with the slippery rocks, I was still having an almost cruisy walk up on the slopes with Di who joined me to get away from the bloody wet slippery moss.  So, Janine led us  on our way out via a convenient spur that would get us to the ridge where the fire trail was.

And within the blink of an eye we were back at the cars.  Peter was taken to the hospital by his wife and needed three stitches, he also had a perforated ear drum – how that happened is beyond us all, although Janine (as it turns out rightly so in hindsight) was very concerned about the seepage from his ear.

Great trip Janine, in an area that I’d been around before (near the Great North Walk) but hadn’t explored – good find.

I inadvertently dumped my pack, shoes and clothes on the garage floor and didn’t clean them up until Sunday, only to find three bloody leeches still crawling around.  Made short work of them, don’t want an infestation at my new house (lol).