Walk and Annual Lunch 2015

Today we're having a short walk before our annual lunch which is at Irene's house this year. Bob is our leader and evidentially has strict instructions to stay in and around the Boronia Hill Reserve.

We parked in the street, then did some suburban walking to the nearest entrance of the reserve. Not the only street walking we'll do today. I mean that in the nicest possible way, after all we don't want to affect our pensions!

It was good to see a couple of our friends who've been elsewhere, Alex and Carol.

Gathering for our initial instructions

Into the wilds

Great views towards South Arm

The first of several entrances we'll use today

There are many tracks in Boronia Hill and the adjoining Slevin reserve, we'll see quite a few this morning.

Almost looks like proper bush

About as adventurous as it gets

As Ron pointed out, this formation resembles a whale

I tried to get rid of the sun flare, but this is as good as I could get at the time. If you look carefully you can see a whale with its mouth open.

As usual, disappearing in the distance while I practise my art

We walked along between houses and through streets, re-entering the reserve at another point.

We're looking for a Morning Tea spot. Yes, even though we have a lunch waiting, Morning Tea can't be missed.

When we arrived at this spot, I chided Bob for only providing two rocks for us to sit on. Sitting down on one of said rocks, Bob pointed beyond the milling crowd towards a ring of rocks a little distance away.

At this point, it became evident there were two classes of seating. First class for Bob, Sally and Adie and second class that provided plenty of seating, but was very close to the fragrant, full to the brim bin where dog walkers posted their collections.

Come the revolution, this will all change!

Second class

First class

Break finished, we continued on, passing some other walkers along the way. It's a popular area for locals.

At one point we stopped to access the time, only to find we needed to kill another hour or so. Some of the group decided as we were fairly near to Irene's place, they would return there while the rest attacked some of the other (and some of the same) tracks. So we split up at this point.

Heading off for another loop

Wouldn't be a proper walk without Mt. Wellington

We're making our way back now, that's Kingston Beach you can see

Someone's plantings are getting checked out 

We make our way back for lunch and find some others who couldn't make the walk have turned up also.

The following photos don't do justice to the amount of food there was! There was also quiche, chicken, salmon and many other delights.

Gordon grabs some salad, there were several on offer

Irene has a large comfortable outdoor area for us to sit in

 Tas had a few words to say after everyone had a chance to eat. You can watch a short video if you want. If you do, you'll see Peggy suddenly rush forward to attend to someone who was drifting off! You must pay attention!

Click here for Tas's address to the group

Thanks to everyone who supplied food and cleaned up after the rest of us, many thanks to Irene for hosting all of us. A little bird told me that Irene was so happy with the way things went, she offered to have the lunch here every year from now on! Of course, that may just be a rumour.

We had 16 walkers and covered 6.3km in 2:19hrs.

You can download the track with the following link. I defy you to follow it on the ground by using a map.
Click here to download GPX file

It was an interesting track Bob led us on, but not as bad as I imagined. Click below to see how it went.
Click here for animated track