Nearly Mt Cougal

I had thought to climb Mt Warning while in the area.  However what we read about it made it seem quite hard, so I decided instead to do the Mt Cougal walk, which has the further advantage of starting off more or less straight behind our accommodation.  Frances didn’t like the look of the words in “Take a Walk” by John and Lynn Daly so decided to stay behind.

The start of the trek was along Garden of Eden Rd for 2 km.  This was enlivened by some folk grading the Road.  I commented to the lady with the warning sign that I thought the road was pretty good already but she said that folk round here complain if their road isn’t graded once a year.  She didn’t know anything about the Mt Cougal track but thought the truck driver might!

 Indeed he did and it was just as well since on getting through the gate I took off along the nice vehicle track which was WRONG.  The truck driver pointed out the error of my ways, and opined that the track hadn’t been used much.  The walking track was a single pad heading off through some tall grass immediately beside the quarantine fence: yes folks I was back in Queensland.  The tall grass soon gave way to lantana, which in places arched over the track.  Someone ought to read the section on ‘maintenance’ in the bushwalking book!  This section was pretty uphill: I don’t think Frances would have liked it much!

After a bit of mucking around through clumps of sugar cane I eventually got into the rainforest.  I was still following the fence which was a fairly impressive bit of work, in terms of the number of pickets and quantity of wire used.  A pity it was so overgrown in places that any vermin would easily be able to clear it.  At one point a nice wooden gate had come out on the losing side in a battle with termites: that made it even easier for the vermin – up to and including humans – to cross the border.

Some of the trees were very impressive as were the figs growing up them. 

I had also noticed a lot of pinkish-red fruit lying on the ground: presumably these were fruits which the plethora of columbids were dining on.  I didn’t see any of them, but did add Russet-tailed Thrush to my life list. 

The next landmark was an official blaze on a tree dating from about 1864 when the border was surveyed in this area. 

I’m not sure when the fence was erected but I was finding it hard enough to walk up here, let alone shlep a lot of fence poles and wire up.  Shortly after this (a bit longer into the walk than described in the book) I got to a stretch described in the guidebook as very steep.  Brother they were not joking.  My guess is that it was about 1 in 1, or 45 degrees, or a 50% grade.  After about 15 minutes of climbing this, basically using the tree roots as steps, my legs were grizzling more than somewhat.  Even the sight of a Russet-tailed Thrush (my only lifer for the trip) didn't inspire me greatly. 

When I then got to an area where the track veered away from the fence into an area of broken rock and largely vanished, I decided that a number of ducks had lined up.  However, rather than forming a pattern which would allow me to shoot several with one bullet, they were line abreast with beaks pointing away from me.  I thought of the legal maxim ‘ex cloaca anseriformes nil bonum venit’ (ie nothing good comes out of a ducks bum) and decided to pull the pin on the expedition.  A bit of a bugger, but I had had a nice walk in some rainforest and added a bird to my life list.

As is always the case with out and back walks I found that on the way back there had been a lot more downhill in the first half than I had realised: another duck!  On my returning Frances commented that this sounded like the family day walks we did in Tasmania which involved scrambling up banks above a 300m drop into the ocean!

Round 2 of the invertebrate wars has just been fought.  I found a small tick on Tammy and was able to keep her still enough for Frances to give the beast a dab of meths and then apply the tweezers with extreme prejudice.  Unlike the last time we did this, Tammie didn’t chuck a wobbly at the application of the meths.

There is definitely another cane fire down in the valley this evening.  As with the previous fire, but unlike last night, it seemed to burn for a very short while.  

It is something I have been very pleased to see this trip, as it has been part of the cane mythology which I had never before witnessed.  When looking at the next image, remember this was taken at night, and the fire was at least 5km away!