Tag Archives: strathbogie

A bike for every occasion?

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My recently acquired touring ebike. Battery assist range 150km. It includes an auto power selection mode. Pedal pushing is always required, but you can choose how much effort to put in. You will keep fit!

Sub title: Central Victoria, the Centre for eBikes.

As I have aged (now approaching my mid 60s), I have progressed from road bikes to mountain bikes to hybrids and now, ebikes.

My message to everyone out there who rides or is contemplating riding is “Get on your bike!” If you are fit and able enough to provide your own power, find the bike that best suits your journeying and ride. If you think you are past it, reconsider. From 8 to 80 years old, anyone with balance who can get astride a bike frame now has bicycle touring at their feet!

With the advent of ebikes for all modes of cycling, the Central Victoria region is perfect for you and your bike. There are many kilometres of un-trafficked rural roads and tracks traversing diversely beautiful landscapes. You will be amazed at where an ebike can take you, from sealed flat stretches across the plains, amongst rustic rolling foothills, to tall treed dirt tracks through mountain forests.

Many people have asked me about the different modes of cycling I refer to in the cycling route descriptors I publish. Most often, about Gravel Grinders. Gravel Grinders as a specialty appeared somewhere in amongst my cycling experience. I missed their rise until alerted by a mad keen cycling cousin.

This alert coincided with the commencement of my mapping and publishing of walks and cycling routes in and around the beautiful Strathbogie region. A good port of call for those interested is the Gravel Grinders Melbourne fb page. The article linked below may be American, but is brief and indicative of gravel bike features for the uninitiated, as well as being fodder for dreamers. It is worth noting that one of the bikes listed is an ebike.

apple.news/AJlzTcm5gRhO2EROnKg-VTw

The cycling routes I have been recording will be found here on seanmathews.blog/cycling and the Connecting the Goulburn Broken Catchment Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/591666734808645 .

Walks can be found at strathbogierangesnatureview , VictoriaWalks and in Pozi online mapping

October Tableland Talk

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Click on the link http://strathbogie.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/202010_nws_TT.pdf

A winter day

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A photo a day.

Cold, wind, sleet, sun, rain, wood chopping, fire, magpie release, novel reading, photo learning, koala watching, glass and nail collecting, vegmite roll, tea, miso, water, Coca Cola, salad roll, apple, banana, writing, poetry, improving news, art, music and a photo a day.

Superb Blue Wren

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These birds keep us entertained every day.

Mountain Hut Creek Reservoir / Charman’s Falls Hike – Garden Range Flora and Fauna Reserve, Kelvin View

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Responsible Authority:IMG_3908

  • Parks Vic
  • GV Water

Acceptable modes of transit:

Walk

Distance & duration

  • Mt Hut Reservoir 2km return 1/2 -1hr (dirt track)
  • Charman’s Falls 6-7km return, 4-5hrs (no track)

GPS coordinates & map

  • 36°48’23.0″S 145°38’20.3″E
  • -36.806393, 145.638982

MountainHutCharmansFallsGrading (using the Parks Vic Track and Trail Grading Manual)

Grade 5

Amenities:

None

Hazards

Snakes, tree and limb falls, very steep inclines, cliff faces, overhangs, steep embankments, slippery surfaces include wet surfaces, loose rocks, soil, mud and vegetation, absence of pathways, flowing water

Restrictions

  • No hunting
  • No camping
  • No pets
  • Take your rubbish with you
  • Take potable water with you

Trailhead sign & Informational Signs

None (Mt Hut Reservoir, GV Water sign at gate)

Directional signs / bollards or trail markers

None

Brochure

None.

Recommendations

Significant sections of this walk are a scramble through steep bush terrain. Trail marking and eventual foot trail creation would improve access and safety.

Conclusion

For experienced, well prepared hikers only. A service track begins at and returns to the Mt Hut Reservoir GV Water gate on the Euroa-Strathbogie Road, but only goes as far as Mountain Hut Creek Reservoir itself. From here you follow the Mountain Hut Creek embankment to Waterhouse Reservoir. At this point, cross the dam wall and once again proceed upwards, around the Reservoir and again onto the creek embankment. There is no trail, the slopes are steep and littered with loose surface material. Take care. However, the reward is great. Charman’s Falls are spectacular, particularly with a good spill of water, and it is downhill all the way back.

A frenzied feed

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I initially thought I had come across an introduced black rat feeding on a cockatoo carcass in the Seven Creeks. However, as I approached more closely I saw the tell tale white tip and webbed feet. You can see the tale tip swishing in the water. It was a smallish rakali with a big appetite and keen to eat as much as it could as fast as it could. So keen in fact, it didn’t notice me standing above it,

Spring Creek Bridge – Armstrong St – Seven Creeks Wildlife Reserve Loop

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Mode of Transit: Walk

Distance from Melbourne: 150km

Location: Strathbogie Township & surrounds

GPS coordinates: Start and finish 35 51’ 13” S 145 44’ 45” E

Map:

Environmental status: 1km Main and Armstrong Streets, Strathbogie – built environment, golf course and pasture.

2.5km bushwalk in Sevens Creeks Wildlife and Bridge to Bridge Reserves – high quality habitat comprising healthy riparian zones.

Elevation: 485m

Degree of difficulty: gradient some short steep rises, rocky outcrops, otherwise easy walking, but requires sure-footedness

Distance: 3.5km circuit

Duration: 1.5hrs

Facilities: General store open 7 days. Public toilets at local Recreation Ground 0.5km up Spring Creek Rd from Spring Creek Bridge

Take: hat, sunblock, sturdy walking shoes, water, camera, phone

Features:

1. Topography: modestly undulating, short steep slopes, rocky and earthen embankments

2. Surface: engineered gravel footpath to bitumen roadway to unmarked and absent dirt trails and rocky outcrops to grassy pathway with uneven ground

3. Waterways: Seven Creeks, turbid permanent water, meandering across flood plains or cascading through rocky terrain with sandy beaches and lazy pools

Spring Creek, clear, sandy or rock bottomed permanent water with cascades running under Spring Creek Bridge

4. Flora: open woodland including significant stands of established swamp, narrow leafed peppermint, manna gums with poa meadows. Extensive decade old Strathbogie Landcare plantings of indigenous trees and shrubs. Occasional, dispersed woody weed clumps (principally blackberry) along the Sevens, but severe around the Goulburn Valley Water Treatment Plant (which they have agreed to correct). Bridge to Bridge is largely woody weed free.

5. Fauna: indigenous wildlife is common, including native fish, birds, koalas, echidnas, wombats, eastern greys, swamp wallabies, rakali, bobucks, snakes, lizards and platypus

6. Natural environment: healthy riparian zone

7. Built environment: Township zone and riparian bush zone with few nearby farmhouses

8. Safety: animal burrows, slippery surfaces, uneven ground, snake habitat, discarded wire

Comments: with the comfort of access to the Strathbogie Store, this short, beautiful walk can be undertaken with little in the way of carried provisions and much to see. Opportunities for candid wildlife image captures are likely.

Directions: Commence at the Spring Creek Bridge, walking up Main St until you reach the Strathbogie Memorial Hall at Armstrong St. Turn left and walk along Armstrong St, you will pass the town water tower on the right and golf course entrance on the left. Keep walking until you arrive at the the disused bridge (completely unsafe to cross). 10 metres before the bridge on the right is a gap in the fence between 2 large posts. Enter the Seven Creeks Wildlife Reserve here. The trail can disappear. You will best pick it up by keeping close to the fence line on the higher side of the slope, deviating to and returning from features that attract you. There is no need to cross the creek. Follow the trail until you get to the Goulburn Valley Water Treatment Plant. Walk under Smith’s Bridge to enter the Bridge to Bridge Picnic Ground and Track. This end of the Bridge to Bridge is a short nature circuit. Either arm of the track will take you to a boardwalk from where you can continue your return to the Spring Creek Bridge via the confluence of Seven and Spring Creeks.

Images:

img_1965.jpg

Nearby Tracks & Trails: Seven Creeks Wildlife Reserve to Brookleigh Rd. Proposed Magiltan Project upstream of Spring Creek to Magiltan Creek.

Links to The Great Strathbogie Trail: along the length of the Seven Creeks Wildlife Reserve

Ideas for improvement: woody weed control, trail markers, directional and safety entry signs, some basic trail work to flatten angled slopes

What you see

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Koala at Smith's BridgeIt isn’t the best shot of one of the local koalas, but it is the only one we saw on this evenings walk along Bridge to Bridge. There will be better shots to come. If you take your time, the wildlife exposure up here is something really special.

We stopped at the Seven Creeks site of the Goulburn Valley Water Treatment Plant akong the way. I will be meeting GV Water reps there in a couple of weeks to show them the state of the area. Hopefully, I can recruit them to the clean up cause in cooperation with our Strathbogie Tableland Landcare Group. I have a vision for extending the Landcare managed Bridge to Bridge bushwalk into a celebrated 12 – 15km experience that encircles the town. So far, various agencies have been supportive and collaboration with GV Water at this site would be grand!

 

 

Walking the Tableland

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Kibbles RdWe are on a journey here. I mean, we are on all kinds of journeys of course, but this one is quite specific. This is a physical journey, one for travelling together. We have tasked ourselves with walking the roads, tracks and trails of the Strathbogie Tableland. Sometimes 4km, sometimes 15, every time something new to experience. Even when we repeat a path there will be a seasonal difference, something that has changed in the landscape surrounding us or something that has changed about ourselves that we take to each place.