Back from four days’ hiking in the Wonnangatta–Moroka National Park May 31, 2013 with the lovely Della and the two Jack Russells who just have to see this wonderful wilderness which is being preserved for ‘future generations’ but not for the current one. We know a beautiful remote flat where we camped amid the comings and goings and roars of numerous sambar deer.
There has been no such comeback for native critters (particularly birds) since the fires of over five years ago. The forest remains silent of birdsong (even with my new hearing aids!) Fire killed timber is now coming down in a big way. The silence is continually punctured by the crashing of falling dead forest giants (‘habitat’ trees?). They will make canoeing the river difficult for a generation. There used to be such a log jam (say 200 metres long) for @ 25 years about a day’s canoeing downstream from the Humffray confluence but the floods which succeeded the fires cleared it a few years back.
I think the 4WD tracks get worse every year: DSE’s 15,000 employees seem to think that ‘work’ means ‘having meetings’. A handful of people with decently equipped 4WD tractors could make every bush track a 2WD road and so provide opportunity for current and future generations to explore our wilderness areas. In any case you need a very serious piece of 4WD gear to get into (and particularly out of) the Wonnangatta Station nowadays – despite its iconic stature. When they opened the road in the sixties the first vehicle in was a Volkswagen Beetle – hard to believe now!
Unexpected rain fell on the third night and all the fourth day (making egress more difficult. The BOM are still unable to foresee this (ie weather four days ahead) but can tell with great certainty and to within one hundredth of a degree what the climate will be like in a century: more folk who think ‘work’ means ‘having meetings’! if only we didn’t have to pay for them all – in more ways than one…
A lovely autumn display just below the station homestead site:
