It’s a little hard to believe, but even accounting for the fact that I normally work and get in a walk as well, Fridays are actually a bit of a lazy day for me. I actually manage a bit of a sleep in on Friday mornings normally, not getting up until Sam’s alarm has gone off. So why am I rambling on about all this? Well last Friday I awoke from my slumber ready to bounce out of bed for another fun filled Feral day when Sam turned the morning breakfast TV on and it was horrible (no, I’m to talking about Kochie).
The first thing I heard on TV was something about a meeting in the White House between Trump and Kim, my sleep deprived foggy brain wondering how Kim Jung Un was playing Trump now? I pried open one sleep encrust eye and tried to focus on the screen and, with the screen slowly coming into focus, the situation was worse than I feared! Fuck me it wasn’t Kim Jung Un meeting Trump in the White House, nope, it was one of Trumps reality TV peers, the Kardashian version of Kim, thank god he’s got his eye on the big picture. While a quick inter-web search confirmed Ms Kardashian has got a couple of things in common with another of Trumps special friends, Stormy Daniels (hey, calm down, it was purely research), I still wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing there. Whilst traipsing around Mt Beckworth this afternoon it dawned on me. Mr Pence had better watch out because I’m thinking Ms Kardashian is lining up the VP job for Kanye ‘Slavery was a lifestyle choice’ West, with informed views like that I’m thinking he’ll be a pretty good fit in the White House.
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| I managed to jag a beautiful winters day for this stroll. |
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the walk up at Mt Beckworth. I’d been up here before, quite a long time ago and it was a bit of a disaster, we’d started from a spot next to a dam imaginatively called The Dam (yep, Sam was with me, actually this probably explains a bit about why she doesn’t walk with me that often) and to be honest we didn’t find much in the way of tracks or signposting. Being a hot summers day I wasn’t really keen on dragging Sam around a mountain on a speculative off track walk so after climbing onto the ridge and checking out a flat grassy spot called The Oval we aborted our stroll and headed home. Pulling up at Cork Oaks Picnic Area this afternoon (you won’t believe this but there is an old plantation of Cork Oaks here!) I was pretty happy to see a track leading off up the mountain.
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Cork Oak at Cork Oaks Picnic Area.
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| Things started of pretty promising this afternoon, at least there was an obvious track. |
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I was using a set of Mr Tempest’s notes today and he warns of poorly maintained difficult to follow trails with woeful signage, so with my previous experience up here as well, I was expecting a few navigational challenges. My pad was all pretty straight forward though as I climbed steeply up a gully, there was even a few track markers to be seen, happy days. After climbing for a few minutes I arrived at a small mullock heap that marks the spot of an old feldspar mine. Yeah, I’ve got no idea what feldspar is either, but Mr Tempest tells me that it was used in the making of glass. The old mine is choked with blackberries now so I decided against any subterranean exploring this afternoon and instead kept climbing. Just after the old mine I picked up a very old 4wd track that climbed a little steeper until I arrived on the crest of a ridge line running to the summit.
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The mullock heap left over from the old feldspar mine.
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The entrance to the old mine is hidden behind this wall of blackberries.
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Meeting the ridge line the hard work was over for awhile.
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Once I arrived on the ridge I only had a few minutes walk until I arrived at the trig marking the summit of 634 metre Mt Beckworth. The trig is not the most notable feature on the summit of Mt Beckworth however, the summit is also crowned by large pine tree that looks like a giant lollipop the tree is called The Lollipop Tree, hmm I’m sensing a theme here. The Lollipop Tree was planted in 1918 along with a few others, the other trees were cut down but the Lollipop Tree survived and was used as a marker for practice bombing sorties out of Ballarat in WW2. Looking at the healthy tree this afternoon I was thankful that we stopped the Japanese at Kokoda because if they’d made Mt Beckworth I’m not sure the boys from Ballarat would of pulled them up!
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If Mt Beckworth Scenic Reserve is renowned for anything apart from it's indistinct tracks then it would have to be it's big rocks.
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After soaking up the sun for awhile on the summit it was time to continue on my stroll. I was now heading down a long ridge to the south along Southern Ridge Track (yep) the open forest allowing for a few views down to the farmland below me. After passing a large rocky slab just off the track that offered the best view from the ridge, I dropped down a bit further to meet an older closed 4wd track that I’d use to drop off the eastern side of the ridge. This old track is not signposted so I was keeping an eye on the map but it was pretty obvious when I got to it, more obvious because one of my responsible 4wd mates had recently been up the closed track and chewed it up a bit.
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Dropping down the southern ridge on Southern Ridge Track I was getting some nice views down towards the small town of Clunes.
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One of my responsible 4wd mates had headed up this closed track, I'm guessing it'll only take 10 to 20 years for the damage to repair itself!
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| It is the wild west I suppose. |
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After the fairly steep descent down off the ridge I met up with a more substantial track that I followed north along the base of the range towards an area full of Manna Gums called Manna Gums Picnic Area. Now I’ve heard that Koala’s have been seen in the Mt Beckworth Scenic Reserve so I’m thinking that this area would be the most likely spot to start looking. I didn’t see any Koala’s in the Manna Gums today though, so I set off on the next section of today’s adventure up Manna Gums Track to The Oval. I’d been very pleasantly surprised today to find not only track markers but also a bit of signposting about the park, but things were still a little cryptic in spots, heading off from Manna Gums Picnic Area I picked up the track signposted to Mt Beckworth. My route now started to climb up onto the ridge crest again as I headed towards The Oval, lower down this section of the walk required a bit of concentration to stay on the correct route but as the track started to get higher up on the mountain the benching made the track pretty obvious.
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Manna Gums Picnic Area.
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Manna Gums Track is a pretty nice walk.
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| I was climbing the shaded eastern side of the ridge until I arrived at The Oval. |
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After avoiding a track junction that was the route back up to the summit the pad deteriorated a bit, most of the punters that head up here must head up to the summit I’m thinking. I haven’t mentioned it yet but Mt Beckworth is another of those Victorian Parks that feature big rocks (makes you wonder why there isn’t a spot called The Big Rock really) and as I climbed closer to the ridge line the rocks got bigger and bigger. Apart from big rocks I was also mucking around a bit trying to get a photo showing the contrasting light between the shaded eastern side of the range and the sun drenched western side, although like all those contrasting light situations my memories are much better than my photographic results. Emerging out of the forest I was back at The Oval, the spot Sam and I had visited years before, thankfully on today’s visit though I not only had a track to follow but also a signpost pointing me in the right direction, this walking caper is pretty easy isn’t it?
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The Oval
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Looking down towards Clunes from The Oval, the little pimply hills in the distance are old volcanoes.
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| I'm thinking they look a lot more pleasant than a carbon belching brown coal power station. |
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After taking the obligatory photo of The Oval, looking pretty good in the golden, late afternoon winter light I think, I headed off up the North Ridge along, wait for it…North Ridge Track. I didn’t get to follow the obviously named North Ridge Track for long though as after a couple of minutes I picked up a signposted walking track dropping frown the western side of the mountain passing through a sparse forest of Yellow Gums called Yellow Gum Track. Mr Tempest suggested that most people can’t follow this pad and just drop off the ridge to pick up the Cork Oaks access road but it looks like the Parks Vic guys have raided their money box, fired up the chainsaw, bought a few track markers and made a couple of signposts, as all was very straightforward and very pleasant this afternoon.
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While the track was good and clear, the late afternoon light was slowing me down a bit as I stopped to take photo after photo, convinced each one would be a stunner, oh well! While I’d visualised this part of today’s stroll as the toughest and maybe the least enjoyable, in reality it was the best part of the walk, I even had a couple of wildlife encounters which is always a pretty good thing. My first wildlife encounter was with a shy Echidna (is there any other kind?) who promptly buried himself under a rock as soon as I got anywhere near him. After getting a photo of the tail end of the Echidna lit up by the afternoon sun I continued down my fairly gentle descent, with the pad levelling out a bit I had my next wildlife encounter as a I startled a mob of Eastern Grey Kangaroos who bounded off before I could get a photo. Crossing a grassy flat near the carpark I had my last notable wildlife encounter for the day when I spied a small wallaby grazing on the grass, like the roos he was pretty skittish as well, but I did manage to get one photo of him, after all if there is no photo it didn’t really happen did it?
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This was a bit of a surprise....Yellow Box Track was well defined with plenty of track markers.
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Yellow Box
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That's the best I could do with the Echidna this afternoon.
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There is no shortage of roos here, unfortunately they were all a bit quick for me to get a photo.
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| I did get a photo of a small Wallaby out grazing in the late afternoon. |
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I was already mentally preparing for the drive home as I ambled my way the last few metres back to the ute when I came across what I considered the highlight of the days walk. Shuffling along I noticed some mushrooms growing beside the track, now there is nothing really surprising about that but for the fact that these mushies were huge. I was sure I’d found the rare Mt Beckworth Elves hiding spot, so sure that I even got down, flat on the ground, to photograph these mushrooms hoping to see the elves. Unfortunately I didn’t see an elf but these huge mushrooms were still something to see, they looked a little dry for good eating but if you could eat them they’d feed you for a week! Wandering the last few metres to the ute I pulled the boots off, got one last photo of the sun dropping down below the western horizon and headed off on the two hour drive home.
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These are the biggest mushrooms that I've ever seen.
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That's my size 12 beside them to give it all a bit of scale.
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| Arriving back at Cork Oaks Picnic Area after another nice stroll. |
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The Dirt.
I walked 6.4 kilometres and climbed 173 metres on what I’d rate as a medium grade walk, whilst the walk is relatively short, the varying track maintenance and marking means that you need to concentrate a little on navigation. Now while you do need to concentrate, the walking infrastructure is a lot better than it was on my last visit years ago, in fact I’m now thinking of revisiting to do the walks that Sam and I couldn’t complete on our earlier visit. As I mentioned I was using Mr Tempest’s notes, these were out of his
Victoria’s Goldfields Walks, it’s walk number 2 in the book. Parks Vic also have some good free stuff online as well. If you like a little mildly adventurous walking, big rocks, wildlife and a bit of history then you might want to consider heading to the Mt Beckworth Scenic Reserve to check it out.
Relevant Posts.
Lal Lal Forest, 2015.
Enfield Forest, Enfield State Park, 2016.
Creswick Forest, Creswick Regional Park, 2017.
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| One last photo of the Cork Oaks and Mt Beckworth before I jumped into the ute and headed home. |
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| It's funny, firewood collection looked to be the least of the environmental concerns from what I could see. |
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| I love this stuff.... |
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