Walking Since 1939

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Yeti Editor

The club is looking for someone to fill the role of Yeti Editor.

The “Yeti” is YHA Bushwalking’s club newsletter. Its purpose is to generate interest in the club by providing reports of past walks and social events, promoting future events and keeping club members and non-members informed of bushwalking issues or club operations.  It was first published in 1990. Since then, the aim has been to publish an edition each season, however it hasn’t been published since Summer 2018-19 due to lack of a Yeti Editor. Nearly all past Yeti Newsletters can be viewed on our website under News / Yeti Newsletter Archive.

If you are interested, or have any questions about the role, please contact our president, Adnan Lovic, at president@yhabush.org.au.


Increase in Car-pooling Costs

Due to significant increases in the price of fuel over the past few years, the club has decided to increase the rate at which drivers are reimbursed from 30 cents per km to 40 cents per km.

Thus, car pooling costs should now be calculated as follows:

Drivers are reimbursed at $0.40 per km, plus any tolls incurred, divided by the total number of people in the car. Some drivers may choose to charge less, but it should not be more.  For example, a 200km return car trip for a driver plus three passengers,  maximum reimbursement is = $0.40 * 200km / 4 people = $20 per passenger.


YHA Bushwalking Victoria Treasurer

The club is looking for a suitable person to fill the role of the Treasurer within our committee. The Treasurer is one of the most important roles in our club as the treasurer manages the club finances and memberships.  Whilst it would help to have a financial background, someone with good financial administration skills would be capable of doing this very important role.

If you are interested, or have any questions about the role, please contact our president, Adnan Lovic, at president@yhabush.org.au.

 


Covid update 1/10/21

Covid Update

We wanted to update you on the impact of the Victorian Roadmap and what that means for recommencing our walk program. We are currently working with Bushwalking Victoria to ensure we have a full understanding of the requirements that will apply to us.

 

When will the walk program recommence?
We think that the best time to recommence walking will be when Victoria reaches 80% double dose vaccination rate (indicative date 5th November 2021). Prior to that point, there are still restrictions on how far people can travel from home, so organising group walks is complicated for a club like ours which has members from all parts of Melbourne and beyond.

 

At 80% fully vaccinated, regional Victoria and Metro Melbourne come under the same rules, the restriction on travel distance no longer applies, masks are only required inside and up to 30 fully vaccinated people can gather in public outside, so the walk program can recommence for those that are fully vaccinated. Leaders will continue to determine the number of walkers they wish to have on their walks up to a limit of 30. Walks will continue to be pre-booked.

 

How will the restriction on being fully vaccinated be monitored?
The Committee is still working through how the requirement for participants to be fully vaccinated will work, and what our obligations and rights as a Club or a leader/member/walker are.

 

Will carpooling be available when the program recommences?
As bus tours can recommence at 80% double dose vaccination, carpooling with fully vaccinated participants should be possible at that milestone. Drivers will continue to have the ultimate say as to whether car pooling is an option.

 

Membership Extension
Anyone who was a member as of 6th August 2021 will get 6 months extension on membership expiry date


Covid-19 update

Our Covid-19 page has been updated.

12/2/21 Lockdown impact

At this stage, all walks on the program are expected to go ahead, as they are after the scheduled end of our  lockdown on Wednesday 17th February.  Accordingly, walkers can continue to book in.  However, if the lockdown is extended walks will be cancelled, and we will advise you at that time, of what the arrangements are for refunds, rescheduling etc”.

We hope you stay safe during this challenging time and look forward to walking with you again soon.

Kris (president)


Happy 2021!

To all our leaders, members and walkers, I hope that you have all enjoyed your end of 2020 celebrations and are ready for a new year.

2020 taught us a lot about what is important, with exercise and bush walking being the perfect way to keep sane in some challenging times. 2020 was certainly challenging for the Committee to try and balance the safety aspects of Covid-19 with running a walks program, hopefully 2021 is simpler.

Leaders

To all our volunteer leaders who led walks during 2020 and have started our 2021 program, thank you! It is very much appreciated that you trust our members and walkers to do the right things to keep safe on our bushwalks and are continuing to share your skills and experiences.

Members

For those of you who were members at 31 March 2020, we have extended your membership by a year and for those who joined after we have also extended your membership proportionately to reflect that we had limited opportunity to offer walks last year. For those who have been walking with the Club, thank you for following the Club’s guidelines and following your leader’s instructions.

Walks

I hope that 2021 has some more normality. However, our new normal will continue to require pre-booking and pre-paying all walks, and limiting numbers. Car pooling may be organised by your leader, or they may provide you with the contact details of others on your walk so that you can choose to organise your own car pooling. Whether we return to Sunday walks with no limits and no booking will depend on government safety requirements and what our leaders are comfortable with.  Keep checking our website – it’s updated as leaders propose walks.

Club nights

We will also take some time to think about when it’s appropriate to start face to face club nights again. In the meantime I encourage you to join one of our virtual club nights, we have had some great interstate speakers we otherwise would not have been able to access. The author of From Snow to Ash, Anthony Sherwood will be our February speaker – a great opportunity to learn more about the Australian Alps.

As always, if you have suggestions, or would like to be involved with the Committee, please contact me at President.

Happy walking!
Kris Peach


Bye Bye 2020! Hiking trivia Quiz virtual club night 1 December 2020

Come join us to say “Good riddance to 2020” in our final club night for the year.

 

 

Use your brain instead of your boots as you put your knowledge about the great outdoors to the test over drinks and nibbles.

More details and register at walks program – virtual clubnight

 


A one day walk of a lifetime – Mueller Hut route, New Zealand

Our new treasurer’s favourite day walk:

Distance: 5.2km one way return via same track

Duration: 4hr one way

Grade: Advanced

 

Located in the Aoraki Mount Cook National Park it is possibly one of the best one-day hikes in NZ.  At 1800 meters, the Mueller Hut provides a 360-degree panoramaview of glaciers, ice cliffs, vertical rock faces and New Zealand’s highest peak, Aoraki/Mount Cook.  Overnight stays are possible but due to its popularity, advancebookings are recommended.


On the day I planned to hike, it was indeed booked out, so I
did the day hike instead. It was a tough uphill slog with an ascent of over 1000 meters in just over 5 kilometres. The path starts well-formed with lots of stairs, but then turns rougher and rockier, with larger boulders to jump across and a steep slope of scree to scramble up.

 

A line of poles every 200 metres guides you along the way.These were a god send as it became increasingly cloudy and foggy with visibility decreasing as I got climbed higher. Just as I thought it was too dangerous to continue,I suddenly cleared the cloud line. It felt like magic, being bathed in bright, warm sunlight, clear blue skies above and surrounded by jaw dropping mountain peaks. It was spectacular.


Because of the short distance and its steepness, the views var
ieddramatically.  At the top you were rewarded with beautiful views of Mount Cook and numerous other peaks, lakes and glaciers, which I enjoyed for several hours before heading back down. A great hike, one which I highly recommend.

 


Day of the Dead on the Goldfields trail

Habitually I travelled and hiked alone. My boyfriend liked to read books on astronomy in bed, but I was sucked like a balloon towards a blue sky, and tethered by heart strings to our room, roamed on a wide radius. Then we got mobile phones: “Hello little cabbage!” “Where are you, Bibiche?

 

Then my darling-heart died and some years went by.

 

Having put my age back by 10 years, I got a casual job with a promotions company, giving colour advice in the paint departments of hardware stores, offering salami samples in supermarkets and so on. I took jobs anywhere, as I like to travel, even in my own town.

 

One day they got very cheeky and proposed a job in Bendigo, 2 hours away, that no one else wanted to do for $25 an hour. But that was fine; I had lived in the beautiful gold city of Bendigo for three years as a child, walking in the quartz gravel beside the road to One Tree Hill with a Dick Wittington bundle over my shoulder, going with Dad in the Holden to find wax flowers in the Whipstick. I loved Bendigo and the mullock heap and mine shaft studded dry bush that surrounded it. I hadn’t been there for years.

I spoke French right, so I must’ve heard of Mandarin Napoleon? Yeah, special Day of the Dead Margarita promotion with it at the Mexican restaurant Saturday night. Mystery shopper – you have to drink one and check everything – all right?? Actually, I did like Margaritas and Mandarin Napoleon, though there was rarely the opportunity, and also had a Seniors Card free rail pass that would expire in a month, but I kept my jubilation at a beautiful expenses paid Saturday outing to Bendigo to myself.

 

Waking to a perfect blue sky day, I started to look for bush walks near Bendigo on my phone. There was something called the Goldfields trail. I put fruit, snacks and water in my backpack, with some makeup and a clean shirt for my job later at the Hacienda.

After a nostalgic stroll along historic View St, and an amble through the old grey walled, 60’s decor Myers store, where Sydney Myer had actually started his emporium empire, I called into the tourist office, located in a beautiful gold money public building beside the well-tended gardens.

 

A volunteer guide gave me a brochure of the trail, with a map of the Bendigo section, and advised me of the bus to catch to Kangaroo Flat. Kangaroo Flat – I did love that old name, but wasn’t a woman murdered there recently? From the service station at Kangaroo Flat I could catch a taxi to the gates of a reservoir where the track passed, and I could then walk back to Bendigo on it. So perfect, so overjoyed!

I suppose I’m a still a thrill seeker, an adventurer with a death wish. Though I relish the excitement of discovering an unknown track somewhere on my own, there is also fear. An ear is cocked for danger: is someone following me? What was that shadow? Could I die of snake bite out here?

 

The taxi driver took me over hill and dale down a lonely road to the metal mesh north gate of the reservoir. Mid-day already, with hot sun overhead, I turned right at the gate as instructed and followed the weedy wire fence along till a narrow path appeared. Soon afterwards there was a yellow post – “Goldfieds Trail”, and the path widened, in a woven tunnel of shade, till I’d arrived at the water channel shown on the little map.

I crunched along boldly now, to scare monsters but also to keep up the pace, because I had to be back in Bendigo in time to get ready for my job in the evening. Singing and taking photos, listening to the humming bush, with the glistening water of the fast flowing channel beside the track cool and reassuring, its speed accentuated by its opposite direction to my strides. Where was it going to? I had forgotten the towns in this area. Away from Bendigo at least.

 

How beautiful the colors of the unchanging bush – with small white clouds in the big blue sky, black textured Ironbark trunks with crimson sap, quartz scattered orange gravel veined with the shadows of branches, subtle grey- green foliage, pink and yellow spring wildflowers and graceful seed- laden grasses. An echidna. A blue tongued lizard on the track with its stubby, black-scaled ancient form. Pink mouth snaps open, shhhhaaaa, blue tongue. “Don’t move dear, I love you, I’ll go around.”

 

It was hot, almost 3 pm and I was feeling a little parched, so I sat on the rim of the water channel to eat my banana and catch my breath. I checked the map again – hadn’t come to the first stage yet, there was supposed to be a kind of clearing and a sign. Had I missed it with all my musings and photos? There was a small hill ahead, maybe I’d see it from there. No, must have missed it, continue on.

The soft sound of cracking branches nearby – I turn around. Two black wallabies, with their rich black and russet fur, hop quickly away and disappear into the bush.
It is now 4.35. I must have missed something and gone too far. The track has diverged from the water channel. Where are the pylons I was supposed to see? Maybe I have already skirted Bendigo, and am on a further section of the track. Feeling a little tired now. No water left in my bottle and finished my snacks. I turned back, looking carefully for the features the map had described, couldn’t spot them, then unsure turned around again and continued onward.

 

The track had crossed an unmade road a while back, I had heard a car on a highway in the distance, and there was an dusty caravan with a TV antenna and two old cars parked up an overgrown dirt driveway off the track to the left. Would it be dangerous to ask in there? No, better work it out myself. Continue on. Stay on the track. Remember the old mines shafts in the area.

 

I’d taken so many photos my phone battery was on red. It was now 4.50 and the Bendigo Tourist Office would close soon, so I rang them to ask for help. However the kindly volunteer I had originally spoken to had left, and this person wasn’t sure what I was talking about. She went to find the booklet, but couldn’t help me.
It is getting quite late now, and I am thirsty, very tired and slowing. I must get back soon so I won’t be late for the job at 8. It surely can’t be far. I look up at the fading sky. Why is the sun there, on the wrong side?

 

Yes, I have walked 19km in the wrong direction and am now – somewhere, more than 30 km from Bendigo! Don’t panic! Stay on the path; remember the mine shafts!

 

Making my way back for the second time, I finally come to the rough unmade road crossing the track, walk down it in the direction I had heard a car long ago, and come to a sealed road, that I walk along. No car comes by, as the light fades.

 

Then I see a driveway and a farm house. I walk up the dusty drive. Two cars parked outside the house, and a big dog. The dog approaches. An old labrador with his tail wagging ambles up and snuggles into my side. We walk together to the house, but no-one opens, though I knock and knock, call and call. The old dog accepts my loving pats trustfully, because I have been lonely and scared on the track, and I google Bendigo Police Station on my red-battery phone to call for help. The number plate of one of the cars matches the house on the road to a particular address with the same street number as the number on the front gate post, so I call a taxi as the old dog and I amble back to the road.

 

Hearing my story the taxi driver only charges $40 and soon I arrive at the Mexican Hacienda. I ask for the Ladies and swish past, emerging minutes later combed and lightly perfumed, with a fresh top and glossy lipstick to match my glowing sunburned nose. I go up to the bar.

 

Do you have the special Margarita with, what’s it called…Mandarin Napoleon, tonight? Oh you do -great! No, just one; I’ll be sitting over there. But can I just watch as you make it – fascinating! And I love all your decorations for the Day of the Dead!

 

By Angela 6/2/19


Our new committee member’s Ethiopian adventure

Simien National park – up close and personal with a Gelada baboon

 

The Simien Mountains in Ethiopia had long held a fascination for me, both as a seemingly exotic destination and as the unique home of the Gelada baboon.

 

In 2014 I joined a 15-day hiking trip in the Simien Mountain National Park, which I look back on as one of the most fantastic hikes I have ever done.

 

Declared a world heritage site in 1918, the landscape in the park is a spectacular combination of soaring cliffs, deep canyons and gentle highland ridges dotted with giant Lobelias, making for varied and often challenging walking and breathtaking views.

 

Along the way we were fortunate to encounter large families of grazing Geladas, with their magnificent, thick coats and bright red chests; Walya ibex negotiating their precipitous cliff homes with graceful ease; and even a rare Simien wolf, hoping to snatch a baby Gelada for dinner.

 

Camping conditions were pretty basic (not at all like a Nepalese experience), but the group was a lot of fun and every day our efforts were rewarded with some awesome panorama or wildlife encounter.

 

At altitudes over 3600m, there were days that sapped our energy and called on all our reserves and willpower to get us to the next camp, but every step was worth it.

 

For anyone looking for an adventure on a “road less travelled”, I would highly recommend this ancient land, with its gentle, welcoming people, extraordinary history and natural wonders.

 

Simien Mountain National Park – world heritage site, challenging walking, breathtaking views


Jann