24/09/21 A Remarkable Day: Melrose

-


Mt Remarkable from Melrose Showgrounds.

We climbed the mountain.
 
Mt Remarkable is a shade under 1000m high and we started from Melrose at 389m and it was all up after that. The first part of the path intersects with multiple mountain bike trails until we entered the National Park through a gate which allegedly is there to keep the bicyclists out but we suspect it's also there to prevent fat people from climbing the mountain.

Phew! Just squeezed through!

In a nutshell, the trail was 15km return and delivered on South Australia's reputation for rocks.  There were big rocks, little rocks, and in-between rocks.  There were rocks scattered over the path and huge screes of rocks to clamber across.  There were even rocks whose only purpose in existing was to provide a surface on which to stub your toe.

It always looks easy at the start, doesn't it? A cold wind was forecast, with a maximum of 14C.  We wore lots of warm clothes which we then promptly discarded and had to lug all the way up and down again. The mountain sheltered us from the wind and the sun was hot.

The first of many rock screes, ranging in size from small to ginormous.

Ad we got higher we were treated to expansive views of the valley, patchworked with wheat and canola.

One of the larger screes we crossed. On the return leg we crossed one of these 3 times as we zig zagged down the slope.

But wait! There's more.

Down in the gully there you can see some wreckage. It was once a Piper aircraft on its way from Alice Springs to Adelaide via Leigh Creek. The pilot wasn't licenced to fly by instruments and ran into the mountain with all on board losing their lives. This happened in 1980 and over the intervening years quite a bit of the plane has walked off the mountain with passing hikers. All that's left now are the bits that are too big to fit in a backpack, and those are gradually edging further down the scree.


Green paddocks to the east.

To the west, the arid hills and the Spencer Gulf.

Grass tree forest at the top.

There is sadly nothing remarkable at the top, not even a decent view because there's too many trees. But there are tables for those willing to slog up here packing a picnic.

So down we went again, over more rocks.

And more screes.

With more beautiful views.



See the white spire in the bush at the bottom? That's the Monument, and also the start/end of the walk. Boy, was I glad to see that getting closer!

The final 500m is blessedly clear of rocks.

We took 3 hours to ascend and 2.5 to come back down, and were very glad to sit down by the time we got back to camp.  It wasn't all rocks though, there were some new flowers to photograph.




Unfortunately on our remarkable day we didn't get in to the museum in Melrose, so the cheese tree mystery is unresolved.  Maybe tomorrow, rail trail permitting...

Good night from shoe tree camp, Melrose Showgrounds.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

23/12/21 The Dinosaurs of Newtown

-
Image
Some time in the months before Christmas, somewhere near Newtown, a shop had a sale of inflatable Christmas dinosaurs. Lots of people thought that a large inflatable dinosaur was just what they needed for their 2021 outdoor festive decor, so they bought the dinosaurs and then discovered that, once inflated, they were very big. Not as big as a real dinosaur would have been, obviously, but certainly big enough to be inconvenient if you happen to live in a trendy little terrace house with a handkerchief of front lawn and second story verandah almost the size of half a vegemite sandwich.   Dinosaur #1: taking up all the available verandah space I imagine that at this stage the dinosaur purchasers may have considered the size of the dinosaur (inflated or otherwise) in relation to their rubbish bin, but were likely prevented from this course of action by children who, enamoured of dinosaurs, had welcomed the creature into the Christmas fold and called it something festive like Rudolph, o...
Read more

Minor Adventures on Quiet Days

-
Image
 Roger took himself off on the train to South Australia for a week, so BD and I decided to have some adventures of our own, albeit not as exciting as riding the interstate train to Adelaide and getting to have an up-close stickybeak at the flooded Murray River. We took ourselves off to the Ormond Lookout to watch the sun set instead. As did rather more people than what we had anticipated. Mobs, in fact. We found a patch of dirt grass and settled in.  "I'm gonna come back here!" declared BD.  She wriggled around a bit: our patch of grass was on quite a slope and she kept sliding out of her shorts.  "With a chair," she added. In between admiring other people's dogs and taking observational lessons in 101 Ways To Take A Selfie, we watched the sun trundle slowly toward the horizon. No sunset is complete without a picnic. There she goes. Further down the beach, a container ship puttered across the horizon under the gaze of a lone beach-sitter.  And us, of course...
Read more

Quiet Life with Cat

-
Image
 After all the excitement of hospital stays, Emergency Department visits, and trying to balance the cost-benefit ratio of hospital cafeteria food, life became a little more settled.  After a week of blessedly boring drug levels BD was given a reprieve from daily blood tests and we, therefore, were released from daily drives to the nearest Melbourne Pathology lab.  We did some laundry and did some cleaning and I hopped on my bicycle and went for a ride or two.  Not that the weather was very conducive to enjoyable and relaxing bike riding, but I went anyway. All was fine at Albert Park, where the swans put on a good show, playing happy families all across the playing fields.  But that didn't last for long. Back at home the new cat let his crazy out to play.  He zoomed up and down the hallway in the middle of the night; scared the bejeebers out of us by jumping on the sound bar and blasting us with high volume TV; hid under chairs and batted at our ankles as w...
Read more