Weekend Out East 2021 Part II
I was planning on writing the sequel to last entry the next day but gosh it's been a busy week and I've either been busy or exhausted from being busy every evening.
Anyway so continuing from where I left off, I was hanging out with friends in the mountains of east central victoria (kind of like how in California we consider San Franscisco to be either about the center or even northern "northern california" when it's really only half way up, here in Victoria when people talk about "Central Victoria" they are usually referring to an area around the center of western victoria. Really Melbourne itself is about the center of the state (or north of melbourne), but the east side of the state seems to be generally disregarded the way we disregard northern northern California).
Last Sunday the plan was to just four-wheel-drive down to an abandoned steel waterwheel way out in the bush but.. only two of us would make it that far in the end ::the narrator says in an overly dramatic tone::
First we visited the dam site again because the two friends who had joined us halfway through the day before, councilwoman Kerstin and her boyfriend Dan, hadn't seen it yet. After this Billie's twin Lek, and Sel, departed on an important mission to console a friend who'd just been dumped by her deadbeat boyfriend. The remaining four of us proceeded up the dirt roads and fire roads to the east of the reservoir lake.
Shortly after we turned off the main dirt access road onto a slightly more four-wheel-drivey road, we crossed a patch of thick mud Kersten and Dan's car became stuck in (wish I could remember what kind of car it was, which might inform the reader as to how well it could have been expected to handle adverse conditions, but I don't recall becaues everything about cars make me snoooore. Billie's car, however, is named Surf, because it's apparently a Hilux Surf which is the Australian name of the Toyota 4Runner, if it interests any of you to know these things). Quickly noticing they were no longer right behind us Billie somehow pulled a U-ie and returned to the scene, where we found them stuck in the mud. They were able to reverse out of it relatively quickly and it was decided that we'd all get in Billie's car, so the other car was parked at a convenient wide place just near there and then...and headed
...Billie's car wouldnt' start. She'd had some trouble with the (alternator? the battery not charging while driving as it should) of late. The timing and location of this problem coming up was really remarkably ill-chosen. We had jumper cables and at any of the other many times we'd stopped and started throughout the last few days we'd have had another vehicle to jump it but now we were quite pointedly on the wrong side of a mud puddle the other car couldn't cross!
Fortunately after a little fiddling we got Billie's car started, and Kerstin and Dan and their two dogs (a greyhound and one of those small curly haired dogs that looks like some kind of teddy bear crossed with a dog.) got in and we proceeded. However, now in an unfamiliar car on a rocky ride sometimes proceeding down slopes at a precarious angle the greyhound was breathing heavily enough that Dan thought it was stressing out and about to hyperventilate or something. So they all got out and Billie and I proceeded down the track a further few hundred meters to see if it got any better, but it didn't, so we returned, re-collected them, and returned from whence we came, back across the mud puddle, and then bid adieu to them and they parted company with us.
From there Billie and I proceeded up the main gravel road to the nearby summit of Mt Useful, upon which stood a fire tour, some communications antenna, and a whooole lot of guys with mullets and southern cross tattoos, wearing plaid jackets and shorts standing beside their four wheel drives drinking beer. Like literally 80-90% of them had mullets. There was a magnifiscent view from here looking south into the lowlands.
From there, having studied the map a bit more, we determined that there was another route to get to the steel waterwheel (not that Billie's hilux couldn't have made it down the other track without a hyperventilating greyhound, though her truck is not currently in tip top shape, but mostly I think we had become a bit demoralized with the first track we attempted after having to abandon it halfway so taking a different route was at least a change of scenery.
This new route proved do-able, the dirt track following along the steep side of the river valley. And it always amazes me that 4x4s going opposite directions somehow manage to pass eachother on these roads. One such vehicle that came past us happened to be some of Billie's former coworkers with DWELP (Bureau of Land Managment equivalent). They gave us permission to bypass the "trail closed" tape they'd just put across the trail to the waterwheel, advising us to just not lean against the bridge rail.
Shortly later we came to the trailhead. There was space to park a few cars by the river, though we were the only one, and sure enough yellow caution tape blocking off the start of the trail at a footbridge across the river which made out of one solid log. We ducked under the caution tape and didn't test the structural integrity of the hand rails.
Personally I much prefer hiking over 4x4ing and it was really great. It was a nice sunny day, the birds were chirping, flowering plants were all around us. As we hiked we reminded eachother several times that this was prime snake weather and season, and sure enough, by and by "snake!" Bille exclaimed, holding up her hand for me to stop. There across the trail in front of us was a large snakeB that she identified as a tiger snake, which is fairly venomous.
Without further incident we reached the steel waterwheel, seemingly completely by itself in the wilderness, though after some searching I found evidence of a building foundation nearby. I climbed up into the waterwheel and Billie took a photo of me there that I think would have been a cool photo.... but her phone was accidentally smashed at work the next day and she hadn't sent it to me yet.
And I took a photo of the informational sign because I rightly foresaw that this same information wouldn't be as readily available on the computer internets
From there we proceeded west along the 4x4 tracks, which included some crossings of severel-foot-deep rivers but Billie's truck had them well in hand. Just past one river crossing, quickly climbing again, I saw this perfect photo opportunity. Well it would have been better if half the photo wasn't in shadow but hey one can't help that. But 4x4s camped in a remote river bend, insanely steep 4x4 track running up the mountain behind them, this is the Australian offroading dream:
From there we proceeded to Billie's place, ate the rest of the venison burrito/taco fixins, and I headed off, it being now around maybe 6pm? Which was way too late to catch the last ferry so I had to drive right through the dark heart of Melbourne which was as stressful as I expected. I think you can maybe get right through the city by taking a tollroad but I'm too cheap for that (despite that I'll pay $72 to avoid the whole thing via ferry, but tollroads are bougousie tools of the capitalist pigdogs! ..plus also I haven't the faintest idea how you actually pay the toll since there aren't toll booths and its deducted straight from your soul or something), but without taking tollroads one has to zigzag through surface streets with cars opening their doors along the curb edge (or "kerb" edge as these spelling maniacs spell it), nightmare inducing "J-turns" in the inner lanes, trams, and all kinds of other mischief. I took two wrong turns due to incomprehensible signage, may have been going wrong way in a major street for a moment, I'm not sure it was dark and terrifying, but anyway eventually survived the city to come out the other side and continue home, the end.