Blue Tongue Bend, Warrandyte State Park - August 2016

The swimming hole below the Jumping Creek Picnic Ground.

Another Saturday has rolled around and once again and I've managed to fit in a walk. The mental health benefits of walking aren't discussed very often, more commonly people talk of the health benefits of walking in terms of exercise and indeed that is part of the appeal to a fat bastard like me, but the mental de-stress I get heading bush after a week of work is probably just as important as the physical side of it for me. The walk doesn't have to be an epic either, even a couple of kilometres in a suburban park is enough for me to wind down. So, needing my weekly mental health break, but with only a couple of hours to spare after attending to all the mundane weekly chores we (yep, I roped Sam in) headed up to Warrandyte to walk the Blue Tongue Bend circuit in Warrandyte State Park.

The Blue Tongue Bend Track is well benched.

This walk basically heads upstream along the Yarra River for a couple kilometres before looping back to the car park over some low hills. Parking the ute at the Jumping Creek Picnic Ground I reset the GPS and, after checking out the lookout above a swimming spot in the turbid river we set off and started to meander our way up stream. The track stays high up above the river for the most part, benched into steep sides of the hills it makes for easy walking. We were lucky today in that while the temperature was hovering in the low double figures, it was a fine afternoon, but there was no danger that even I would be trying out the numerous swimming holes that we passed today. 

The Yarra River was flowing a banka after recent winter rains, the manna gums along the river are home to a resident population of koala's, although we didn't spot any.

Occasionally the track would drop down to water level, the Yarra River swollen from all the recent winter rain we'd been having. The vegetation was the usual mix of tea tree, eucalyptus and wattle trees, nothing to unusual there but what was a little different was that the ground was carpeted is a lush, vibrant green moss that gave the place a bit of an enchanted garden feel to me....what's that, yeah I might be turning into one of those blogging tossers!...but it did look good. Tearing my eyes away from the carpet of green there was no shortage of birds along here either, although the only bird that I got a remotely presentable photo of was a cockatoo perched up on a dead limb of a tree.

Sam's searching for koala's.

The ground was carpeted in bright green moss in some spots.

My only half reasonable wildlife shot today.

The wattle added the usual splash of colour to the sometimes drab greens of the Aussie bush.

Reaching Blue Tongue Bend, a large bend in the Yarra River where the river almost turns back on itself we left the waters edge and started to climb up and old fire track inland a bit. Once away from the river the soils are not as good so the forest is a little sparser (is that a word?), initially we climbed Blue Tongue Bend Track before walking some sections of a nature trail that starts at the car park. We had to be a little careful along these inland tracks as they were even slipperier than the river side ramble so it would be very easy land on your bum. It wasn't long however and the nature trail led us back to the ute at Jumping Creek Picnic Ground, pulling my boots off I was happy that my leg had passed another small test. I've actually started swimming again to help with the re-hab for my dodgy leg, something that I haven't done in any seriousness for around twenty years, but fuck I'm unfit, I use to do a 500 metre warm up, now I'm battling to make 500 metres.

There are some large manna gums near Blue Tongue Bend.

Following the Blue Tongue Bend Firetrack inland, that's Stone Brae Firetrack heading up hill to the left.

The Dirt.

We did 5.6 kilometres today and climbed 153 metres on this easy stroll. This walk is good in any season, the colder weather brings out the moss and wildflowers while in the hot weather the river has some nice swimming holes. The Jumping Creek Picnic Ground has a shelter, toilets and a wood BBQ so its a nice spot for lunch before or after your stroll. I used the notes out of Tyrone Thomas' old book 40 Bushland & Park Walks in Metropolitan Melbourne, the book's long ago out of print though. Parks Vic have some free stuff online that may get you through the walk.

Relevant Posts.

Warrandyte Gold Mining Trail 2015

Even the dryer section of the walk had a carpet of moss.

Following the nature trail back to the Jumping Creek Car Park, it was a bit slippery on these greasy tracks.