Musical Adventures: Bush Bashing

My next weekend of adventures started off on Friday with a delicious dinner at my aunt Sue's house and a tour of her new shop.

On Saturday morning I took off to Enfield State Park for a Rogaine with Victorian Rogaining Association and several of the members of the Mountaineering club. Rogaining is a cross country navigational sport that started in Australia in the 70s. It is kind of like a treasure hunt - you have a compass and a topographical map with the locations of checkpoints on them and try to find as many as you can in the time alloted. The one I participated in was 6 hours. The checkpoints are fairly spread out and are located at places like the head of a watercourse or a spur or a knoll. One thing you have to take into account when navigating in Australia is the magnetic declination or the angle of difference between magnetic north and true north. Where we were the declination was 12 degrees. I guess you actually need to take it into account in a lot of places but depending on where you are it can have a small or very large affect on your navigation. Take a look here to see what the declination currently is near you: http://www.magnetic-declination.com/

Anyway, I was on a team with another beginner so we had a lot of fun figuring out what exactly it was that we were supposed to be doing. Different checkpoints are worth different amounts of points so we had to figure out a route that we thought we could do in the alloted time and gain the highest score.

The first three checkpoints we found without a problem but after that things started going a bit downhill. You have to get your baring off of the map based on where you are to where you want to go but if you aren't exactly where you think you are or if you don't walk exactly in a straight line you can easily get off track. The trick is once you have found your baring to find a tree or something exactly in your line of travel and walk to that and then find a new tree. If you start going sideways by accident you will not end up where you wanted to. The fourth checkpoint we were aiming for was the head of a watercourse and we were so close but just couldn't find it. There was no water in the watercourse so that made things difficult because everything was sort of sloshy. We ended up spending at least 45 minutes looking for it but in vain. Moving on, we saw a red kangaroo and later three gray kangaroos and at least one had a joey hanging out of its pouch!

Some of the time the area was pretty clear of scrub or we even had a track to follow but other times there was undergrowth that was as tall as us and quite prickly and wet because it had been raining. When you are trying to walk very quickly in a straight line tripping on sticks, getting caught by blackberry brambles and getting a bit bruised up is inevitable. There were also sections that had been recently burned and so there was no way to avoid getting charcoal stains on everything but it was such a blast! We ended up coming back 3 minutes late and therefore were docked thirty points off of our score but it was so much fun.

one of the clearest areas we walked through - also recently burned

my teammate following the baring

red kangaroo!

On Sunday I went on an adventure to French Island with Alysha. We got up bright and early for a two hour tram / train ride to Stony Point where we caught the ferry over to the island. While we were waiting at Flinders station for the train, a fight broke out on our platform and it actually took quite a while for security to show up. Some very entertaining and hung-over high school boys decided they needed to sit next to Alysha and I on the train and talk to us the until they reached their stop about an hour down the line. Definitely an interesting trip so far. The ferry departs only about 200 meters from the train station at Stony Point so getting tickets and hopping on was no trouble at all. The water in Western Port Bay was surprisingly calm - calmer than the Ashley river is most days.

Once we arrived on the island we set off towards the General Store to hire some bicycles for the day as we had seen advertised online. Little did we know but there was also an information kiosk much closer to the ferry landing that also hired out the same bicycles for the General Store. Anyway, we collected the bikes and had a delicious raisin scone before heading off down the slightly hilly dirt and gravel roads of the islands. At some point we headed down a road that was on our map that just ended (not like on the map) in solid, prickly, mosquitoy bush that was nearly as tall as us. After bashing our way through for a while we came out on an old field and worked our way to the coast of the island where we walked our bikes over the rocks and sand heading back to the next road on our map. We were so happy to see the road again! Stopped for lunch on the beach and I had a yummy lunch of crackers with sweet chili cream cheese and apples.

the ferry

quizzical cows - they don't see much traffic

the road that eventually dissappeared

finally! an open area!

Alysha walking her bike along the beach in front of the mangrove trees

bikes resting on the rocks at lunch time

The island was a lot bigger than we originally thought it was and there were a surprising number of cows and sheep on the island. It was fantastic to be out there exploring without a care in the world and no particular schedule. We wandered past the very small primary school for the 10 or so pupils that reside on the island. It uses solar power and the general store / post office had a windmill out the back. On our way back by the general store I got an ice cream cone (homemade) and we petted the dogs that wandered around the yard by the store. Later on we collapsed in a field in the sun and took a wonderfully refreshing half-hour nap and even with the sun screen managed to turn a little pink. A little tired and sore from bicycling for eight hours on bumpy dirt roads, we returned home and I felt so refreshed.