Tag Archives: Woodgate

Hikes of Fire

Posted on by

Last year we had some really bad bushfires in this area. The national park was closed and there was no access to the two walking trails (The Melaleuca Circuit and the Banksia Track) until QPWS cleaned them up and deemed them safe. The fire fighting effort meant that the firebreaks in the park and on council bushland were widened and upgraded. Once everything was burnt to a total crisp, it was easy to see through what had once been inpenetrable, dense wallum scrub and Melaleuca swamp, and I took the opportunity to explore areas that I didn’t realise were accessible. I got a bit excited about this and thought it might be possible to work with QPWS to develop a hiking network in the Woodgate and Kinkuna sections of the national park to begin with. Delusions of grandeur have led me to believe that the entire park (taking in the Buxton, Burrum River sections and Bingera NP) can eventually be networked with hiking trails and walkers camps similar to those found on any of the awesome hiking trails we already have in Qld. Click here for a description of what I’m talking about.

After much frustration due to the images being updated on Google Earth last month, I was able to come up with three new loops and an overnight hike. The loops all utilise the caravan park at Woodgate as a campsite. The overnight hike utilises Burrum Point campsite. Speaking as a hiker, this kind of thing is more likely to attract hiking visitors to the area because hikers like hiking and presently there are only the two short walks in the park, which wouldn’t really attract visitors who are keen on covering long distances. Basically what I’m saying here is that people aren’t going to come here for hiking because there’s nowhere to hike. In fact, this whole region doesn’t have many opportunities for long distance hiking, which is kinda silly considering the Burrum Coast National Park covers 26 000 ha, which is quite a chunk of land and is considered an ‘outstanding example of Queensland’s natural environment and cultural heritage’ according to the Department of Environment and Resource Management.

So far this is what I’ve come up with. I’m not a cartographer and I don’t expect anyone else to understand these stupid maps, but I had to start somewhere, which is what you’ve got to do if you want to make change. I do not recommend that anyone attempt to follow these ridiculous maps! Don’t do it, just don’t! I’ve emailed QPWS and hopefully they’ll come through with the goods to improve on what I’ve got and we can eventually have lots of awesome trails in this area:

This is the map I started with. You can see why I wouldn’t recommend anyone attempt to follow this!

 

First loop: 17.73km

Second loop: 23.68km

Third loop 21.62km

Overnight hike: 34km

These pictures are crappy, I know that, but that’s OK because there’s nothing wrong with putting yourself out there if you want to make change happen. If I waited until everything was perfect before I did anything, I’d never get to bloody well do a single thing!

So, it was shitty that we had the fires and some of our houses nearly burned down (mine included), but if that never happened I would never have come to find these new hikes that will not just benefit me, but others who are interested in living a life made of adventure.

Appreciating nature is what humans are made for and the more we can get out in it, the healthier we’ll be, the happier we’ll be and the more likely we’ll be to be able to overcome the crappy things that seek to tear us down, like fires, viruses and mean-spirited arseholes. 

Flame a new path and fire up your mind

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fatty and Skinny in Woodgate

Posted on by

Sometimes people tell me I’m skinny. I don’t think I am, I’m just really fit, so I have a fair bit of muscle and not much body fat. This doesn’t happen by accident because I train pretty hard, which is why I don’t really like getting told that I’m skinny. I just think that people aren’t generally used to seeing women who are my age and look like I do.

When I was a kid, I was teased for being fat. I don’t even know if I was. I do know that I was taller than everyone else in my classes all the way through primary school. It wasn’t until around grade nine or ten did the boys start to overtake me in height, and even then, there were only about four of them. Mr Fell, who was a teacher at my primary school in Hervey Bay whispered in my ear one day, “Jenny needs to go to Jenny Craig” What kind of an arsehole says something like that to a kid?! Ugh.

Me and Fatty have started hanging out a fair bit lately. This is Fatty in his natural habitat. Taken on the latest secret track I discovered in Woodgate:

I found a secret track on Google Earth a while back, so yesterday I set out with a hand drawn map (I don’t have an internet phone) to see if I could follow it:

f

I rode for two hours, mostly through deep sand along the secret track and back home again. It would’ve been around 30km. It was a really hard ride, but still, it was awesome, and this time I didn’t fall off, although I came close a couple of times. See, the bike needs to go forward when I’m on it, which is the whole concept behind cycling, and if I don’t have enough momentum when I hit a deep patch of sand, then over I go. It all happens in slow motion and is quite painless due to the soft landing. Getting the sand out of my shoes, and last time out of my hair and ear, is another story, especially when I’m all sweaty.

I fell off once due to a spider’s web. I’m really scared of spiders and I rode down yet another secret track and went face-first into a spider web. All I could think of was having a giant spindly-legged beast on my face or on my helmet and I screamed (even though I’m a girl, I rarely do this and my screams sound nothing like you’d imagine a girly scream to sound)  and jumped off the bike mid pedal, it stopped going forward and promptly fell on my leg. Fatty is heavier than a regular mountain bike (due to his obese wheels I’d say). This was about three weeks ago and I still have the bruise. There was no spider. This is how big a spider is:

 

 

But this is how big it feels to me, even if its non existent:

I looped around back to a track I’ve ridden down multiple times and Fatty said he wanted a rest, so he posed for a photo here:

I love Fatty, but it wasn’t always like that. And the thing is, he doesn’t even belong to me. He belongs to the cool guy I’m married to. When the cool guy bought this bike I told him he was being ridiculous. “It’s a stupid fad these fat bikes. We’ve already got bikes, why do you need one like this? It’s ridiculous, look how big the wheels are!” It’s pretty funny now that I’m the one who rides Fatty all the time and am always going on and on about how great it is to have a bike that can do the things that Fatty can do. There’s no way in hell I’d ever be able to ride a regular mountain bike in the places I take Fatty, and there’s no way I’d ever be able to make a regular mountain bike go as fast as I can get Fatty to go. On Fatty I feel like I’m invincible. I didn’t like Fatty in the beginning and sometimes it’s good to be wrong about things. Mr Fell was wrong about me too, when he believed I was worthless, and I was wrong about myself for a long time believing that I was fat, ugly and nonathletic.

Be wrong and see where it can take you

 

 

And the People Went Prawning

Posted on by

The Woodgate version of Kitty O’Meara’s poem:

And the people went prawning. And cast nets, and lines, and waited, and waited, and thought about the barra and the jack and were still in their boats and on their shore. And they listened to the ocean, the breeze and the white bellied sea eagle screeching overhead. Some people caught fish, others prawns and still others crabs. Some came home empty handed. And the people began to think differently.

And the people changed. The ones who had once taken more than their bag limit, lifted pots and took for granted their idyllic home, watched as the waters healed and the scorched bush regenerated. And after a time resilience led the way, it’s pillars holding back the loss, allowing people a new freedom and a new respect for each other and their home. They were healed of arrogance and dreamt dreams not of plunder, but of abundance, kindness, and a sustainable way of living, being and doing.

Still. And the people went prawning.

 

 

 

Sea sick

Posted on by

People probably think I’m a tough mofo, but I still get scared every now and then. It’s just that I don’t let my fear stop me. It’s not always easy.

I went fishing the other day with some awesome friends from Woodgate. A couple I lovingly refer to as The Tidies, which is an amalgamation of both their names, and another mate who could otherwise be known as Tytus Brosch (this in an in-joke that no one will understand, but I’m using here in the pursuit of anonymity and also because I wanted to draw a picture).

I really like boats and I like fishing, but it’s been many years since I was on a boat that wasn’t in command of the cool guy I’m married to and I was a bit worried about how my mate Tytus would behave on the water. What if he’s a total cowboy? I worried, and what if I need to pee out on the ocean when there’s three other poeple on a small boat? I wonder how long we’ll be out there. Will I get really hungry? What if the boat sinks? What if the waves are really big? On and on it went. None of that stuff was an issue. Tytus was great on the water, no hint of cowboy in him, but what I didn’t even consider for second was getting sea sick.

To my horror, I got sick! I was totally surprised because I’ve only ever been sea sick once when I was about eight years old, so I’ve been telling myself for years that don’t get sea sick and I’ve always felt a little bit self righteous about that.

One of us had already upchucked by the time we’d gotten to the first spot, and I said to myself, no way am I gonna let that happen to me, but as the morning wore on, I began to doubt my ability to follow through with that commitment. Even so, the remaining three of us didn’t say anything about feeling sick and we all kept fishing and joking around as though everything was perfectly normal, find and dandy.

After a while I felt I had to mention the situation and said, “Gees, I feel a bit sick.” Immediatley the other two people on the boat who didn’t appear sick at all yelled “Me too!”  and we all started laughing. All of us had been staying stum in an effort to hide our apparent “weakness”.

In the end we caught a few fish between us and had a great time, even though all of us were crook as dogs! We laughed about it and I guess that’s what will make the trip a lasting memory.

It’s always interesting to me that the things that I might be concerned about are never the things that come up as challenges. I’m really glad I didn’t let my reservations about the fishing trip stop me. I would never have had the opportunity to see this because I usually avoid getting up at 4am:

Sunrise through the mouth of the Burrum River. It’s a hard life in Woodgate. Oh, how I struggle. NOT!

 

What if the opposite of your fears transpired?

Throwing knives and a YouTube doco

Posted on by

In my last post I wrote about sucking at stuff in 2020. I started by using my throwing knives and the GoPro (for separate things) and I wasn’t disappointed at my expectations of sucking.

On the 1st and 2nd of January I set out in my kayak with the GoPro attached to my head to film what I thought would be an awesome documentary on the Burrum River. I paddled around for ages giving a running commentary of the goings on, while imagining how great it would all be look once I was able to edit and post it on YouTube.

When I got home I was excited about watching it and making it look really cool so my fantastic footage could go immediately viral. Rubbing my hands together in anticipation of critical acclaim and vast fortunes, I set about attempting to view what I’d recorded. I could see it on the tiny screen on the GoPro itself, but none of the media players I have on my computer would let me see the visual. I could only hear the audio. I downloaded it this way, then that way, then yet another way, but none of it made any difference. After around five hours of dicking around and being close to tears of frustration, I decided I’d better pack it in for the day.

The next day I went out and took some more footage with different settings on the GoPro. I was certain this would be the answer. It wasn’t. I dicked around with it a bit more, but after a couple of hours I still felt like crying, so I had to leave it, and googling the problem wasn’t any help.

On the third day I posted my problem on a hiking facebook group that went something like this: Help me, I’m too stupid to work a GoPro, and lots of lovely people, who were once stupid, just like me, responded with helpful advice. In the interim, I’d decided that I’d just upload it to YouTube as it was because I had an inkling that YouTube might be running under a better system than my Asus laptop, which I’ve had since 2009. Guess what? I was right, YouTube’s system is better than Windows10. Who would’ve thought! This is the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVNOqcKHmnE

So, what I learnt here is that  I made a buttload of assumptions about how this whole exercise would pan out, which is probably something I do all the time.  I also learnt – quite sadly – my laptop is too old to edit stuff from the GoPro and that no amount of dicking around with it is going to help. Now I forge on with the advice provided by the hiking group to see if I can download some of their suggested software to bridge the gap between my geriatric laptop and the already superceded GoPro Hero 7. I almost cried a few times while learning this stuff and it made me feel really annoyed, but I made it through the challenge and came to no ill fortune.

Then it was time to throw some knives. This is one of the activities I highlighted in my most recent post: I’d never thrown knives before and I thought it would be interesting to see how I progress at learning something totally new. I knew I’d suck at it to begin with and yep, I was right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7af4RUnTVQ

As you can see in the vid I miss every single one! At least some of them are actually hitting the target. I managed to get one knife into the target out of about forty throws, but it was right on the very edge. I lost one knife in the leaves on the ground and the cool guy I’m married to had to go and buy a rake so we could find it the next day.

It’s hard not to be good at something. It makes me feel stupid and useless. I know that’s normal, but it’s still a difficult feeling to embrace. I guess this is what stops most people when they discover they aren’t an expert straight away when they try something  new, and probably prevents them from even trying in the first place.

The start and finish are irrelevant because

GREATNESS COMES ON THE PATH