Back to the Hiking

Okay so the Yasi Cyclone thing wasn't much to write home about...

There was quite a lot of trees down and fences toppled but no major damage, this means the walking tracks in the rainforest are un-walkable! Bloody hell.

So I cruise over to the Red Arrow walking track because I figure it gets a lot of movement from the after workers and it should be okay...... Only to find it fenced off!
Wow I say ( I really said something else).
This fencing was .... I'll just post the stuff. Damn I should have taken a photograph of the path being blocked off.

 

Yeah that's the stuff.

This fencing was in a few spots all along the track! I jumped the first few and then ripped the rest down and chucked it to the side.. There was no notices as to why the temporary fencing was there - as far as I knew some kid had put it up as a joke. Or whatever.

So anyway as the Red Arrow walk is part of the Mount Whitfield Conservation Park. After going to the Queensland Government website I see >>

Opening hours

Mount Whitfield Conservation Park is open 24 hours a day.
So This seems like a bit of a joke.
After looking in detail at the site I note "Stop the spread of weeds and pathogens"
I had to laugh - this is in the same park that has "Removal of Bamboo prohibited"
WTF? That's a noxious introduces species in my Mount Whitfield Conservation Park???
Needless to say I'll be writing to both D.E.R.M. and the Cairns Council.
Well maybe I won't, I'll just brood on this for a while.

Yasi Cyclone stuff

Yeah well ban news, my camera decided to crap itself soon after the cyclone hit, so I lost heaps and heaps of pictures.
Managed to save these two though...



First is a tree in the middle of the road: 

 

 This is a tree down on the side of the road:

Bob's Cyclone Yasi blog!

Yeah damn strait, I'm right in the path of this Yasi girl.
Well by now you'll all have heard of it, for you Statesers it's a Hurricane but down 'ere we call them Cyclones.

She's about to hit but don't get caught up in the media hype to sell their stories - it's just some wind and water that residents have had the best part of a week to prepare for.

If their roof flies off? Well it was a shitty roof. They should know this area is prone to Tropical Cyclones and act accordingly.

Anyway I haven't had the tv on for more than ... Well since the moto gp was on in fact.

I mean look at this :
For those without a qr reader: HERE

It's not until you get right in the epicentre where the winds start to become destructive. Sure the system is BLOODY huge but the important section of it isn't.

Yeah I'll leave it at that cause my power will prob go out soon, due to a *** ****** **** massive Cyclone Yasi coming at me!  Arrr!

I'll post some pics next few days

Blue Arrow Pictures

So I went back to the Blue Arrow yesterday and took some photographs... Here they are! Well some of them anyway.

So first off I came across some sort of huge lizard, can't remember it's name right now but they are fairly common in the bush up here.
I have left the pic of it at the end because I want to keep the photo large and it looks crap having a picture at the start that's massive.

Right the first pic is just of the path ways and it shows you how nice the actual walk is, there's always birds chirping and sometimes even a kingfisher drops by. But never for too long.

I'm told the snakes on this walk are pretty good and used to walkers. They seem to scramble off pretty fast. 

  

Good view form one of the many lookouts

    

This is the path! I kid you not - that's my backpack on it. Get a few snakes in there I reckon

 
   

 Another view of the walking track

My fav place on the whole walk, the crisp cool rainforest stream.

  

Blue Arrow

Okay this was a pretty good hike, lots of stairs and no scrambling to speak of.

The hike starts off from the 'Red Arrow' track, the hub of after work fitness fanatics. So quickly move through that and you're past all those wankers abusing their bodies for the sake of looks.
Once past the Red you make a short climb ( all climbs are really steps in this walk) up to the lookout. This wasn't really that great when I was there - there was quite a number of low lying clouds about.
Now the Blue really starts, first off is a short spell of downhill and then Bang! Feels like it's straight up, and the winding steps along the ridge line just keep going on forever.
After about 20 minutes of this you come to another lookout- oh ( I forgot to mention this hike is a circuit track so I am walking clockwise) this lookout has some better views and you can even see out to some of the cays in the ocean.
This is a fairly slow climb to the summit of the mountain is approx 350 meters and is relatively easy, there is an abundance of local wild life and I did get a little scared when I came across a bloody huge snake! By a little search it most likely was the Eastern Brown Snake Picture here.

So another hour on and it's the half way point with another lookout, this one is good.
You can see a lot of the rainforest to the west and even make out patches of reef out to sea, it was great and I stayed a while.
So it's a little walk back and mostly downhill now and the absolute highlight was coming across a stream and being able to submerge myself in the crisp cool rainforest water. It was such a refreshing feeling.

So back to town and I'll be doing that walk again some time soon.

Back

Happy new year!
Well I had a bloody good trip over seas for a few weeks but back now.
I can't even remember what hike I was going to write about......
So The next one will be called the 'Blue Arrow'.
It's a tough one and they say it takes about three hours to do, the reason I'm keen on this one is it's a circuit track so none of that walk for ages and go back the way you came crap.
Apparently you can see the great barrier reef from the peak of the mountain, guess I'll find out soon enough.

Bob's ramble

Okay going away for a while, will post more in a few weeks to all my loyal followers! lol