Chris's Random Ramblings
Sat, 01 May 2004 - Rubber Chickens
Rusty's rubber chicken made the WIN TV News last night. Hopefully
pictures coming soon!
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Sat, 01 May 2004 - Mt Wee Jasper
Finally managed to organise myself to wake up early enough to head up
to Wee Jasper to walk a bit of the Hume Hovell track. It was a wet and
windy day, but the path was in good condition, and the walk up to the
top of Mt Wee Jasper enjoyable. Unfortunately due to rain the views at
the top weren't very good. The whole track takes about 20 days to
walk, and I'd like to do more of it in the future.
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Thu, 01 Apr 2004 - Blue Mountains
I had a couple of days of leave owing to me after working through a
weekend, so I decided to take an extra long weekend and head up to the
Blue Mountains to do some hiking. Its only about a 3.5 hour drive up
from Canberra so I managed to do a short walk in Glenbrook, at the
base of the mountains, before heading up to Leura where I'd booked a
place to stay. Echo Point in Katoomba was a bit disappointing -
although the views of the area were very good, its very touristy and
noisy. The cost of parking was certainly rather exorbitant - $2.20/hr
for off street parking.
Daylight saving ended Saturday night so I took the opportunity to wake
up fairly early and head off for a walk really early (for me). I
parked up by the Golden Stairs, walked down and over then up to Ruined
Castle and then further up towards Mt Solitary. It got uncomfortably
exposed near the top of Mount Solitary so I didn't get quite all of
the way to the top as I wasn't sure about doing parts of the
scrambling over the rocks without anyone else around. I did find a
nice place to have lunch and immediately had some birds for company.
The photo below is of one a few seconds before it tried to make off
with a bag of my food! They were almost as bad as the Keas in New
Zealand.
That night I had a bit of a google around for some other walks in the
area and found a good bushwalking site
which described a walk down into Blue Gum Forest which formed the
beginning of the national park. The area is as nice as described on
the website and I had a very pleasant lunch break by the river. I kind
of wished that I had the gear to camp overnight in the
area. Interestingly, although the trail is very steep, I ended up
going up much faster than I did down - my legs really don't like steep
drops and they get a bit wobbly.
Blue Gum Forest
Grose Valley
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Mon, 01 Mar 2004 - Digital Clarity
Finally got sick and tired of the pretty dodgy tv reception I get
(especially during bad weather) and went out and bought a digital set
top box. Its only a standard definition one, but my tv isn't that big
anyway. Goodbye to Mr Static.
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Mon, 01 Mar 2004 - Mt Tennent
On Sunday I took the southern side route up to the top of Mt Tennent.
A really nice sunny, but not too warm day for a walk, with a bit of a
breeze to keep most of the insects away. There is a fire lookout on
the top of Mt Tennent which is normally locked. But this time there
was someone there (watching for fires) and he was nice enough to give
me a bit of a tour of the place. Not surprisingly there is a great
view from the top.
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Sun, 01 Feb 2004 - Mt Tennent
I went for a walk up Mt Tennent, which is just south of the Namadgi
National Park Visitor centre. The mountain was pretty much burnt out
during the bushfires in 2003 and the track has only recently been
reopened. Its not particularly well marked (everything kind of looks
like a track once you remove most of the vegetation) and I got a
little misplaced a few times. With most of the tree cover removed
there wasn't much shelter from the sun and it was pretty
hot. Unfortunately I didn't take enough water with me and had to turn
around before getting to the top. Mysteriously, the route down was
*much* shorter than the one up, so maybe there are actually a couple
of tracks up. I think I'll try the fire trail up on the south side of
the mountain next weekend.
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Sun, 01 Feb 2004 - FHS 2.3 Released
The final version of FHS 2.3 has finally been
released. Of course, a day
later we found a few bugs, but I think these can wait for 2.4. Why
don't people bother to read the draft documents?
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