Today we were supposed to do a walk down at Lauderdale, but this clashed with a visit from the Chinese President, Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, and this caused much disruption of traffic through Hobart.
Streets were closed, the Tasman Bridge over the Derwent was closed twice and even Mt. Wellington wasn't excused. It was closed most of the day and police were even patrolling some of the walking tracks. Heaven forbid the President should meet a sweaty, hairy bushwalker!
So, it was decided to move the walk to Margate, south of Hobart. The weather was... interesting. Big wind gusts, sunny, small showers, overcast. We just needed snow and pestilence to complete the set. Bob was our leader for the day.
The walk commenced behind the Margate Oval and, crossing the end of the oval we picked up a track to a right of way that skirted the back of Meredith's Orchard, before coming back to the Channel Highway.
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| Mt. Wellington. It was so windy, if the Chinese President had jumped up while on top he could have visited Bruny Island too. |
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| Gearing up for the start. |
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| Grassy tracks for a while. |
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| Looking down on Meredith's orchard. |
Crossing the road we found a little bit of bush and followed the track to the waterfront. Here we found the start of the Dave Burrows Walk, along the coastline.
It's only a short, but pleasant walk, which comes out behind the fish processing factory. It's dirt road walking from there until we turn off into a field.
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| Our first (small) bit of bush. |
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| Dave Burrows was a late local resident who pushed for this area to be a reserve and put together the track. |
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| I wonder what that blue & white sign is? |
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| Well, doesn't that give you a warm and fuzzy feeling. At least they could have wished walkers "Have a nice day". |
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| Cormorants |
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| Nice walkway. I wonder what the large, black plastic pipes running along the ground beside it into the bay carry? |
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| Leaving the Dave Burrows walk and picking up Gemalla Rd. |
It's a clear field, but we found the track was lined for the most part by beehives. They buzzed me several times and afterwards I found a couple of walkers had been stung. So if anyone follows our track, don't wave at the bees!
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| Distant collection of peaks is called 'Sleeping Beauty'. Must have been at the end of a long winter when it was named. |
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| Walking along Middle Rd., trying to avoid being run over by large trucks. |
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| Into what we thought was, the safety of an open field. |
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| Busy as a... well you know. |
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| Don't wave your arms about and irritate them. |
We came to Beach Road and followed it to the
Dru Point Bicentennial Park where we found a place for Morning Tea. After tea, we followed the walking track around the park and entered suburbia from behind the Channel Christian School.
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| There's always a couple! Ignoring instructions from Bob not to cut the corner, Gordon & Tas find their own way. Me? I'm just being the responsible photographer and recording their actions. |
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| A number of black swans off Dru Point. |
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| Lunch |
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| I don't know why these two were banished. |
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| I looked for the collective noun for black swans. Big mistake. | |
- a ballet of swans
- a bank of swans
- a bevy of swans
- a drift of swans
- a eyrar of swans
- a fanfare of swans
- a flight of swans
- a flock of swans
- a game of swans
- a herd of swans
- a lamentation of swans
- a regatta of swans (on water)
- a sounder of swans
- a squadron of swans
- a team of swans
- a wedge of swans (in flight)
- a whiteness of swans
- a whiting of swans
Take your pick.
We followed the footpath up Beach Rd. to the Channel Highway and, after crossing, turned right to head down to the bridge and pickup another footpath. This runs next to the Margate Rivulet, and passes behind the new development.
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| Galahs at Channel Christian School. |
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| Margate Rivulet to our right. |
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| Creeping development behind Margate. |
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| Not much water in the rivulet. |
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| Getting closer. There was a brick house being built to the right of the wooden frame one. |
It's not too far before we turn off on a more rural track. This winds around before we come to Van Morey Rd. which we walk along before turning off on a side road for a very short distance, coming back to our starting track.
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| Nice grassy track. |
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| One local knows we're here. |
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| Sort of sets the theme of the whole garden. |
Following part of our starting track back to the oval where we have lunch at the sports pavilion.
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| Lunch at the pavilion. |
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| Close as I'll get to a cricket pitch. I wore this shirt in honour of the Chinese delegation, but they didn't get to see it. |
A pleasant walk, despite the wind. We had 11 walkers and covered 11.9km in 3:14 hours.
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