Montrose to Cadburys 2015

Today we're walking along the coast of the Derwent River between Montrose and Cadburys. Starting out at the DEC (Derwent Entertainment Centre) we were led by Julie and Richard.

The weather was very misty over the hills and overcast, while the temperature was comfortable.

Making our way the short distance to the shore, we start out on a couple of boardwalks that cross over Grove Reserve and Humphrey Rivulet, continuing alongside the Brooker Highway.

Car park at the DEC

Starting out on the first boardwalk

Very overcast day.

Looking down river

Lots of bird life

Small boat in Elwick Bay. Keep this in mind for another photo at the end of the walk.

Walking along the noisy highway, we're glad when we reach the turnoff near Berridale Bay, although we had had a slight respite near Montrose Bay High School.

Getting away from the Brooker

Now we had a quieter walk as we headed for MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) for Morning Tea.

The museum was actually closed for the day, which put paid to my idea to volunteer ourselves as a living exhibit in exchange for a free tea. Never mind, we found a comfortable place to sit for a while.

Despite being closed, there were quite a few visitors wandering around.

MONA in the distance and vineyards in front.

This is what is passing for bush today

MONA

Morning Tea AND Gordon's birthday!

Gordon supplied Tim Tams and Peggy supplied fruit cake

After tea, we made our way towards the shore, passing some interesting sights on the way. Wooden tepees playing music inside etc. Also some wildlife.

Mooned by a Peacock

A bit more ordinary

Interesting parking art

Walking around Cameron Bay, we have great views of the sewage works and the caravan park. Not as bad as it sounds, we made our way around the shoreline to Lowestoft Bay to pick up the coastal path. Julie had wisely contacted the caravan park before hand to make sure they had no objections to our passing through.

The path goes around McCarthys Point and around Connewarre Bay to Windermere Beach. Here we go left around Windermere Bay towards the wetlands at Windermere Community Foreshore Park and lunch.

You can follow around the bay and the path will lead finally to the chocolate factory.

Leaving MONA by the backdoor

You can just see the Cadbury chocolate factory across the bay

Lots of black swans in Lowestoft Bay

The foreshore path. It gets narrower.

If you look carefully at the tiny white blob in the center, just off the point, you can see the DEC where we parked

Tas is thinking of taking people on tours of this section of the walk. It runs behind many homes and he says it has one of the best collections of escaped introduced species you can find!

 

To reach a shelter for lunch, you have to walk along Faulkers Rivulet, cross over this old sandstone bridge and walk back.

I'm not sure what we did wrong, but we were relegated this spot for lunch

Others enjoyed the more sophisticated facilities on offer

Cadbury Chocolate Factory

Surprising what's lurking in the grass

After lunch as the weather appeared about to get worse and a light mist of rain was about to happen.  We decided to walk back directly along the Brooker and not follow our original footsteps around the shore.

Comfort stop

After much yelling by both myself and others, Bob finally turned around for his photo

 At the beginning of this walk I put a photo of a small boat in Elwick Bay and told you to keep it in mind. While walking back and passing the boat, Bob and others spotted what appeared to be an invalid scooter on the foreshore. As we got closer we could see it wasn't occupied, but another surprise was revealed.

It was equipped with small boat trailer, and the gentleman who had used it obviously owned the blue boat (top left corner) and was on board at the moment.
The trailer was equipped with a hand winch to reload the boat. Good luck to him.

We had 14 walkers and covered 14.16km in 3:57. The weather held off, as usual.
A good, leg stretching walk.

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