Here is the 21st photo in my daily photo series:
Well I couldn’t resist posting this beautiful landscape even though I’d taken it down near Ubobo on a friend’s farm. I took it on the 5th July 2008.
Tag Archives: mountain
#21 – DPS
Exploring the Kanaka Trail
Yesterday we decided to try and find the Kanaka trail, which is a track that was built in 1884 by the South Sea Islanders, for the sugar industry in Yeppoon. This blog post gave me the idea to try and find it, but I only thought of doing it yesterday, so it was a snap decision!
The blog post linked to above gave links to a few sites, but I found http://www.aussieheritage.com.au/listings/qld/Yeppoon/SugarWagonTrail/1749 to be the most helpful. The page on the Aussie Heritage site gave some kind of geographical co-ordinates for the start of the trail, so I found a converter and converted the co-ordinates given into the type that my GPS could understand. Unfortunately I didn’t get to use them, because we found the trail by accident, although it was only a small section. By the time we’d walked and explored it thoroughly everyone was too tired to try and find the beginning, so that will have to wait for another time.
Anyway, I better start telling you how we find it. First of all we drove along the beachside road heading in the Farnborough direction, because I wanted to see if we could get to the co-ordinates that I found. After a bit of looking in the roads and streets up there, we decided to head back and walk up Meikleville hill (where the trail starts), using the track that goes up to the Radio and TV towers. I won’t tell exactly how to get to the access track, but I’ll give you a clue: It is on the western side of the hill. If you’re serious in climbing it just email me.
The top of the second hill, looking out over the ocean.
About halfway up the hill, the access track split into two, with the bigger track heading up to the top of the Meikleville and the smaller track heading off to the left along the ridge of the hill. Since we’d never been along the smaller track, we decided to go that way. The track continued on, and eventually we came out on the top of the hill across from Meikleville. I guess the geography is something like a mountain range, except in small scale. We never had to go down to ground level, instead we just walked along the ridge.
On the top of the second hill the smaller track split into two even smaller tracks, one going down the hill on the western side and other (which was very steep and narrow) going down the hill on the eastern side. It was at that point we decided to go back.
Now, when my sisters were coming up the second hill after me, they had seen a really rough shelter with old tarps, mattresses and cut branches. We had all come down the hill and were investigating this when I saw another track heading off, with a row of stones on either side! At this point we weren’t sure whether or not whether this was the Kanaka trail, but as we ventured further on and saw that the rows of rocks on either side were continuing, we decided that no-one would go to this much effort just for a walking track. A bit further on, we came to this large collection of rocks that confirmed that this was the Kanaka trail.
A definite sign that the track we found was indeed the Kanaka trail. All those rocks would have been at least a metre high.
A tiny bit further round the corner than the photo above.
Now for the sad part: Just 30 metres or so after the above photos we came out onto a block of land that had been all cleared and dug away. When we walked over to the other side to try and find the trail again, there were no traces. Today (Sunday) my mum was talking to some friends who knew more about the Kanaka trail and they said that the Capricorn Coast Historical Society had actually taken the developer of this land to court over the issue, but the developer had won 
.
We came out onto a block of land that had been cleared. Try as we might, we couldn’t find any trace of the trail continuing around the hill. I think we’ll need a good guide for that!
After playing a while on the hill (think large rocks, kinetic energy and a steep slope), we walked back to the old tarps to try and go the other way. We found a little bit of the track, but after a while it petered out and split up. So we stopped looking, walked back down the hill, got in the car and went home. A short and sweet ending 
.
But this won’t be the end of the search. I’m going to get in contact with some people who know the track really well and we’ll probably do some more exploring in the near future. Stay tuned!
A Secret Creek at Kemp Beach
Just a note to everyone that I have already written a guest post about the creek at Kemp Beach over at Yeppoon Chronicle. If you want to know how to get to the creek, or see more photos, just head over to my post there.
Last Saturday I went with my family to Kemp Beach, because we wanted to explore the creek there, especially after the recent rain. I was a bit disappointed, because it was only flowing under the footpath at it’s usual slow rate. However when we walked up a bit I discovered that it mostly goes underground near the footpath, but further along it flows freely.
Anyway, just a couple of meters into our exploration I spotted a small snake with a yellow belly and a black top sunning itself. It wasn’t scared at all, because even when I stood on the other side of the stream it just stayed put.
Later on I had a glimpse of another snake, and from what I saw I think it was about 3 times thicker with the same markings as the little snake. Unlike the little one, however, he was definitely no hanging around, so he took off as soon as he saw (or heard) me.
The snake – which I think is a tree snake or a yellow belly.
As we progressed, we found quite a few small waterfalls such as the one above, although that is more like a minature waterfall.
Further up, we came out of the fairly dense tree cover and emerged into the open, where we could see up the rest of the hill.
In one particular spot we found there were heaps of little ferns (I think) growing under a tree.
We kept going up and entered into some more tree cover, where I found some really brightly coloured tendrils that were creeping across the rocks (in some places there was just sold rock that the water ran over).
Eventually, after I’d found some really pretty green moss and caught a glimpse of a much bigger snake with the same markings as the small snake, I reached the top. The above is a view over down the creek, over Kemp Beach and Rosslyn Bay, and in the distance, Yeppoon.
[tags]yeppoon, creek, water, kemp beach, mountain[/tags]
Walking at the Noosa Headland National Park
While we were down in Noosa we did a few walks on the Noosa Headland National Park. At the start of the track they had lots of information signs with clever designs. There were also lots of little freshwater streams running beside and over the paths, probably as a result of the flood-inducing rain that Noosa had received before we arrived. There were great views all along the track, so I took quite a lot of those type of shots.
One of the beaches that we discovered on the walk had thousands of medium-sized smooth rocks all over it – you can see a Contrasting Sharply photo of them as well as the ones below. An amazing thing about these rocks is that they were really bouncy. I threw one of them as hard as I could at the other ones and it must have bounced about 8 times!
Climbing Mt Hedlow
At the beginning of this winter we said that we would climb a nearby (within 10km) mountain called Mt Hedlow, which is approximately 230m high. Because of snake danger, climbing mountains like Mt Hedlow in Summer or Spring is not recommended.
Anyway, we drove up as close as we could to the mountain and started to walk. I had put on my SES trousers, shirt and boots to protect myself from snakes and branches. After about half an hour of walking we reached the base of the mountain and started climbing. Below are a few photos of Lake Mary (a small lake near Mt Hedlow which has shrunk a lot) and Mt Hedlow itself. The mountain you can see in the background of Lake Mary is not Hedlow, which is actually to the left of the lake.
I sighted the first snake just as I was about to step on it. It was fairly short and slim, and I think it was a light brown colour. It slithered away into some rocks and plants so we just walked around it. Some time after this, I spotted a plant whose leaves had intricate patterns on them. I liked the photo so much I put it on my photoblog. A bit further on we stopped for a while and I took the opportunity to snap some photos of the view which can be seen below.
About 5 or so minutes later we were able to see up to the north, including Lake Mary.
Finally we (my mum and I, my sisters stopped before the top) reached the top of Mt Hedlow after a long climb that took about 50 minutes. I took a few photos to prove this, as you can see below. The round piece of metal in one of the photos is a survey marker.
After reaching the top and adding a stone to rock pile (each time someone climbs a mountain they add a rock to the pile to show that they’ve been there), we started our descent to the bottom. On the way we saw another snake, this time a yellow belly. See below for the picture. Anyway, we arrived at the car very feeling very thirsty and ended up coming home after dark. All in all, it was a great way to spend the afternoon!
