Mt Everard Circuit, Kinglake National Park - July 2016

The wooded hills of Kinglake National Park.

It's election day in Australia today, which means it's time to head for the hills. I wanted to do a reasonable length walk today, but one with no chance of any Feral carnage, as I've got an appointment with the surgeon on Monday and he wouldn't be to impressed if I rocked up to my surgery with bark already missing. Kinglake National Park with its network of walking tracks and fire tracks sounded like a safe bet, enough hills and a long enough walk to get the heart rate up a bit, and the open forest should provide for a fairly incident free walk. I decided to re-visit the Mt Everard Circuit, a walk I haven't done since the big bush fires ripped through a few years ago.

Shelley Harris Track.

I pulled up to the deserted, slightly damp Jehosaphat Gully Car Park at 10am, as usual the hardest navigational challenge for the day was finding the start of the route in the large picnic area. This area has changed a bit since the fires I think and while my notes suggested staying right at the beginning of the route, as far as I could see there was only one track to take. For the rest of the walk along Shelley Harris Track I kept left at any track junction before eventually coming out at Mt Jerusalem Track. In my fading memory I remember Shelley Harris Track as being a ferny rainforest walk with a bit of duck boarding to ease your passage, however today, while there was a fair bit of damp ferny stuff there was also longer sections through dry eucalypt forest, I'm not sure if its my memory or if the fires have changed the nature of the land. This section of track was also threatening to bring my cunning plan to complete the walk without any misadventure undone, there were a few large trees down and a lot of scratchy vegetation crowding the track, I was somewhat more cautious than usual as I pushed my along the slippery muddy track through the scrub.

Shelley Harris Track has a few ferny sections.

But is mainly drier forest.

There is still a lot of evidence of the Black Saturday Fires.

Eventually I popped out of the scrub onto the wide Mt Jerusalem Track, all the rain we'd been having in the last few weeks though meant that even the fire track sections of the stroll were slippery so it was a cautious Feral walker who made his way towards the next landmark, Cookson Hill. This walk is never very far from civilisation and the track over Cookson Hill parralled the major Heidelberg-Kinglake Road for a couple of kilometres, although the traffic noise was far enough away that it wasn't annoying. 

Blue sky, things were looking up.

Mt Jerusalem Track.

There isn't much of a view from the summit of Cookson Hill.

Crossing back over the main road I headed up Mt Everard Track, after an initial climb this fire track makes for easy walking, the open forest along here was a mass of colour as wattle competed with the  pink heath, backed up by the ubiquitous grass trees and eucalypts. This section of track largely follows a ridge that runs between Mt Beggary and Mt Everard so apart from crawling around taking photos of all the flora I got a few views of the surrounding forested ridges and valleys. Bypassing slightly to the west of the summit of Mt Everard I picked up the lesser Bundy Track and commenced the steep drop down into the valley of Dry Creek.

Initially the route climbs bait on Mt Everard Track before levelling out along a ridge.

Bundy Track is more of a traditional walking track, initially it sidles along the side of a ridge for awhile before heading steeply down. The descent is long and slippery even in the dry, so I was once again taking it slow and steady, I'd been lucky so far today and had only had a few spots of rain but the ground was still wet and slippery. Eventually the steep walking track comes out at Old Kinglake Road on Dry Creek. Dry Creek wasn't dry today though with a reasonable flow of water cascading its way downstream, the water flowing over the grass made for some nice photographic opportunities. The gravel Old Kinglake Road is a nice stroll, with the small creek on one side of the road and a mixture of bushland and farmland on the other side, the road walk was actually an interesting interlude.

The Wattle was out along Mt Everard Track.

Make sure you take the walking track heading into the trees here.

Bundy Track drops fairly steeply.

Reaching the old Steels Creek Picnic Ground I turned up Mt Jerusalem Track and started my climb back up to Shelley Harris Track. I suppose this next section is the crux of the walk but its a fairly easy climb really, the 300 metres might sound a lot but its a fairly easy gradient. The climb up Mt Jerusalem Track once again provided some more views of the surrounding ranges, although now there was some ominous dark clouds that drew my attention, hmmm maybe I'd be getting wet before I got back to the ute. Once again as I climbed the forest opened up and the wildflowers and grass trees started to appear. Mt Jerusalem Track actually bypasses the summit of Mt Jerusalem to the east, the wooded summit would be easy enough to get to but with a view almost the same as from the track I didn't bother scrub bashing over to it today.

Dry Creek wasn't dry today.

Walking a short section along Old Kinglake Road wasn't to bad for a road bash really.

The start of the climb up Mt Jerusalem Track.

There looked to be a bit of weather coming in as I climbed up Mt Jerusalem Track.

The upper reaches of Mt Jerusalem track feature more open forest.

Meeting up with Shelley Harris Track again the walk was almost over, I just had to retrace my mornings route back to Jehosaphat Gully Car Park, now on this mornings walk out I'd noticed that I'd covered a lot more ground than my notes would of suggested, so on my return journey I figured that I'd pay a little bit more attention and try and work out the discrepancies. My guide book suggested that the walk was 1.9 kilometres, the Parks Vic signpost suggested it was 3.4 kilometres, so I was interested what my GPS would say. Shelley Harris Track drops down initially to cross Pinchgut Creek in a bit of a ferny glen, it looks like the creek has been scoured clean in a big flood and it was fairly easy to scramble down into its bare rocky bed, once again I used my patented camera on knee technique to try and get some photos of the rushing water, I actually had a gorilla pod in my pack but I was to lazy to dig it out. 

3.4 kilometrtes, OK.

1.9 kilometres, hmm.

We'll see what the GPS says when I get back to the ute.

Climbing out of the creek bed I continued my walk back to the ute, seeing some fungi I decided to crawl around on the ground and see what I could do with the camera, once I was down in the mud my  camera battery decided that it was time for a charge, ok, so crawling over to my pack I grabbed a new battery out, thinking to myself that this fungi better be a good shot. Slotting the fresh battery in though I got an error up on the screen telling me that I needed to use a battery suitable for the camera, now I've been using this battery for over 3 years so that was odd, what was even odder was that the battery was obviously powering up the camera because the LED screen was working well enough that it could tell me to get an appropriate battery, strange. Anyway the fungi would have to wait for another day, luckily I was only a few hundred metres from the ute so the post want suffer from any lack of photos. Arriving back at the ute I checked my GPS, it said that I'd walked 2.9 kilometres, so its shorter than Parks Vic suggests but longer than my guide book said. Over the years I've used numerous guide books but my favourite author is John Chapman, his notes and maps are normally very good, but his distances are frequently quite different to what I get on my GPS, sometimes I put it down to wandering around taking photos or navigating off track, but sometimes, like today there is no obvious reason. Interestingly, when I'm using other guide books they are a lot closer to what my romantic GPS says, Mr Tempest's distances are pretty close to spot on and Ms Ball's are almost perfect. Mr Thomas' distances are sometimes way out too, but then again he was using a sextant and an abacus to calculate a lot of his figures!

Crossing Pinchgut Creek on Shelly Harris Track.

Pinchgut Creek, using my knee as a tripod.

The Dirt.

I walked 22.8 kilometres on this stroll today and climbed 844 metres. I'd rate this as a medium grade stroll, the whole walk is either on walking tracks or more commonly fire tracks with a short section on the very quiet gravel Old Kinglake Road. The dry open forest is recovering well after the 2009 fires that decimated Kinglake and its surrounding bush. Like I mentioned above I used notes from the house of Chapman out of their Day Walks Melbourne book, it's walk number 27 in the book. I think Mr Tempest has also written up this walk. This isn't a really remote walk, you can see the high rise buildings in the CBD of Melbourne from some of the high points but in spots it feels quite remote. Parks Vic have a lot of free stuff on line for Kinglake National Park and it would pay to check out their latest information as I think there has been a few changes on the ground since I was last there before the fires.

Here's a link to a walk I did at the nearby Andrew Hill back in 2015.

The bush in Kinglake National Park is slowly recovering from the fires, but you don't have to look far to see evidence of that terrible day.

So my GPS comes out at 2.9 kilometres for the Shelley Harris section, I reckon 2.9 feels about right, but who knows and probably more relevantly, who cares?