Knopwood Hill - Silwood Ave 2016

Today we're walking from the end of Silwood Avenue (Howrah) up to and around the top of Knopwood Hill and returning. We're, sometimes creatively, led by Bob.

Most of the time you can say the weather on the Eastern shore of the River Derwent is better. Not today.

It's cold, wet and foggy. Perfect weather for walking after watching the first episode of "The Kettering Incident" the night before. For those who don't know, this is a dark, slightly mystical, possible alien abduction drama filmed in Tasmania. If you're really interested: Click Here for a description.

We park near Howrah Beach and gear up for the start.

Lovely day for a walk

Bob leads us down the path (what's new?), across athletic grounds, past the Shoreline Shopping Centre and up until we make a turn off into a little lane way that leads to the first track up.

Even the fungus looks bedraggled in this weather

We're going somewhere up there

Not much view

On we go

Before we reach our turn off onto the hill, we walk along South Arm Highway.

I should mention at this point that Bob promised us a variety of new experiences on this walk. Different types of surfaces, interesting views (Ha!) and so on.

The photo below illustrates one of these experiences.

One way to get to the footbridge over the highway

Over the road and up the hill to turn off and start the climb up.

South Arm Highway

The track up...

...complete with running water

 It's a steady climb up and slippery in places, but we're all used to that now.

Views are almost non-existent

We continue climbing until we reach an old 4wd track. About 3 meters up a tree is this sign. Neither Ron or myself can make out the print. Too much rain on the glasses. We'll have more about this later.

On we go, looking for a spot for Morning Tea and after a short while we find the perfect one.

Undercover with seating for all

Break finished, we continue on. It's not really raining, just very damp and misty.

Many tracks in this area, both vehicle and animal

Harking back to the Kettering Incident, think of the money saved in smoke generator costs if they just came up here

Soon we come to a cyclone fence at the top of a long drop. Turns out this is above the waste transfer station. Judging from all the rubbish trapped in the fence and distributed around the top of the hill, most of it is transferred up here.

Ron was quite taken with this tent. A bit of tape and it would be as good as new!

On we go, leaving the mess behind and soon reaching a fence to cross. This brings us out into an open paddock that could have great views, but who knows?

Today's photo of Mt. Wellington, or the Opera House, or Buckingham Palace. Take your choice 

We finally reach an open gate and enter some light, but twisted bush.

Handy shelter, for a sheep

These two add to the atmosphere

On we go until we reach an old wire fence to cross. I was last as usual and while I was putting my pack back on, Bob disappeared.

All that's left of Bob

Turned out he was just getting his bearings. As it worked out that didn't help.

We take a small track down through the bush until we reach a junction of tracks. Naturally, we took the one leading up.

Down through the bush

About the only bit of colour we saw

Everything was dripping

Carol wanted a sample to show how the leaves grow, so I whipped out my chainsaw and cut her one

Now we're going up hill

It's a good climb until we began to notice footprints going the other way. Another group walking in the area? The tracks were fresh. They were also familiar. Yes, we'd been this way not too long before, so we turned around and went down again. We'll blame the mist.

We found where we should have gone before and walked down until we began to see signs of civilization again.

This was quite impressive in real life

We can just make out a roof in the centre

We continue down until we come to a concrete driveway and signs that indicate this area had been subdivided into blocks. Going down took us to a cul-de-sac and a barrier across the driveway. 

There also was a sign and when we walked around to see what it was, it contained the notice below.

Cutting a long story short, looking up the quoted court cases gave the information that on fee simple property if you are told to leave by the owner and don't, you're trespassing. The court cases mainly pertain to police entering property and not leaving when the owner told them to leave. The court considers this a withdrawal of permission to be on the property and the police are then guilty of trespass. Simple!

Continuing on, we pass through houses looking for a place for lunch, which we found.

What's that about a second childhood?

The playground provided seating for a drizzly lunch. Now, harking back to about an hour ago, Bob promised us there were no more hills left to climb on this walk. Unfortunately, as he admitted to me, he forgot this one.

We'll forgive Bob as it wasn't much of a climb

This hill led us to another pedestrian bridge over the highway and into the wilds of Shoreline Shopping Centre where we received a few strange looks for some reason.

Passing around the rear of the centre, we came to another new experience Bob was going to give us.

That's it, we're going dumpster diving

And there were some interesting looking boxes in some of the dumpsters, I can tell you.

After that, we continue on to Howrah Beach which takes us on our last leg to the cars.

Where's everyone else?

It was a good walk and it will be fun to do it again on a clear day and see what we missed. Walking in the mist today gave a completely feel to the walk.

We had 8 hardy walkers and covered 10.23km in 3:54hours. Oh, there were signs of better weather on the western shore.

Click Here for Animated Track

Click here to download GPX file