Victors Garden 2018

Today we're walking from Tolosa Park at Glenorchy and heading to Victor's Garden on the slopes of Mt. Wellington. Bob is our leader.

The weather is o.k. as we leave Kingston and is forecast to get warmer later.

We park at the end of Tolosa Street for our start.

Ready to go

We make our way through the gate, the area beyond is closed to cars, but open to bikes as the Glenorchy Mountain Bike Park. I've only gone a little way when I realize I've left my stick leaning against the car. Turning around, I fast track back to the car and collect the stick. There's another car nearby and a lone walker gets out and sets off ahead of me.

I'm walking fast and see the group turn off the main track to the right, heading into the bush. I've almost caught up with the other walker when a burst of noise comes out of the bush. Poor bloke nearly jumped out of his skin. I knew it was only my group and this made them easier to track.

I soon caught up and at this point I have to make a confession to Bob. I did take a shortcut through the bush to latch onto the end of the group.

On we go, walking on a small bike track.

Getting closer to the tailenders

We make our way up to the Tolosa Fire trail before heading uphill through the open bush.

Short walk up the Tolosa Fire Trail

Heading off track

Everyone is warmed up and outer coverings are being shed

We travel a short distance on the Water Fire Trail before heading down to the Priest Fire Trail and heading left, up hill.

Leaving the Water Fire Trail

After a little while, we leave the fire trail, heading bush again until we reach the North South bike trail. 

North South Track

It's about that time of day, so we find a spot for Morning Tea.

Morning Tea

Ron doesn't look comfortable. Perhaps that loud crack when he sat down has something to do with it

Little flowers on the track

Break finished, we continue following the bike trail. If you're familiar with bike tracks, you will have noticed they proceed uphill via a series of switchbacks. This gives rise to people being tempted to take a short cut to reach the upper track. Unfortunately, this is not allowed and a couple of miscreants were caught earlier on, and Bob dealt out a large number of demerit points to the offenders.

Bob has stopped to make sure the lesson was learned

This brings up another reason I took up the post as unofficial photographer. I can always claim I have to take a shortcut to get the right photo for the blog. 

We leave the North South Track for the Kangaroo Fire Trail. According to the map, this turns into the Saw Pit Fire Trail somewhere along its length.

It's a steady climb ahead

Lots of colour around us

We finally reach the point where a faint foot pad leads off into the bush, taking us to Victor's Garden.

Start of the final push to the gardens

This is the good part

We stop just before we reach the corner of the first wall, and a water bottle is dropped, rolling down rapidly towards me. I catch it, but this is a sign of things to come.

First view of the lower stone wall

Bob decides to take us along the wall and up the other side, so we begin to scramble across the slope.

You can see the wall on the left appears to be entirely supported by trees

I noticed many of these holes, often around the base of trees. From what I read, these are the homes of the Garden Wolf Spider or
Lycosidae Lycosa godeffroyi

We reach another corner and start up. We're walking up what is obviously a water course when it rains. It also appears that a diversion channel was built into the wall to feed water into a storage pond.

Water channel under the wall

Looking over the wall is a dug out area

It's a reasonable slope here, and the group is spread out above me. I take the photo above, turn and realize the second object of the day is making its way rapidly down towards me. Not a nice cuddly plastic water bottle, but a jumping, leaping large rock. The wall is immediately to my left and the rock is coming down with more changes of direction than a politician. I decide to leave any attempt at avoiding it to the last minute which turned out to be a good move as it flew past me. So just for a short time, I was between a rock and a hard place!

The run away rock came from up there

We continue climbing and the bush is thicker above the upper wall, so we cross into the enclosed area. 

Inside the wall

There appears to be a series of terraces

Upper wall

 We make our way down to a wider, flat area and follow it along.

More recent construction. These sticks are lashed together in a frame for some unknown purpose

A number of fallen trees of varying sizes block the terrace

We continue along to find a wide stone stairway leading down another level. This will take us to our lunch spot which is where Victor had his living quarters.

Steps down hidden by leaves etc.

Heading for lunch

An artifact

Everyone finds a spot to sit on logs and rocks for lunch.

Lunch. Gerard was disappointed I missed his wave, so you can have another look below

Gerard's wave

While eating lunch, I have a look around and pickup a visitor who dropped in to share my food.

Food thief making a getaway

Returned to the bush. I can confirm that no insects were consumed with my lunch

This strange almost alien appearing plant is obviously introduced.

Alien appearing plant

This appears to be the adult form

There are a number of these growing in this area.

As we were getting ready to leave on our return, Wayne pointed out this piece of wood on the ground and said it resembled a Maori sword. I assume he meant a Patu which has a somewhat similar shape.

Personally, I think it was for removing pizzas from the wood oven just behind Wayne.

Victor's kitchen and, perhaps, pizza oven

Now we start to find our way out and back to the incoming track.

There was a large log, just visible in the photo above on the left. The group went down this side, and I squeezed around the top by the kitchen and came down the other.

There was another wall on the other side, for what I don't know.

It's as much of a scramble going down as coming up. Several detours around logs too big to crawl over.

Another wall and perhaps another walled area

Scrambling down

It's not long before we reach our starting clearing. From here we return to the Saw Pit Track, branching off to take a slightly different direction back.

Heading down

This green tunnel will take us to the North South Track

We reach the North South Bike Track and head back towards Tolosa. I'm behind when I discover something completely missed by the main group.

A native orchid. Shame on you all for missing it!

On we go, along various tracks leading down to the main bike park.

'X' marks the track

Not a lot of green up here...

...it gets better

Outskirts of the bike park

We walk past several drains and the one below contains something unusual.
 Sadly, it's the remains of the rare Tasmanian Giant Peg Leg Rat. Possibly drowned in a rain storm.

We had 15 walkers and covered 10.38km in 4:53hrs. The weather was fine for walking and Bob took us onto some different tracks.

I've copied what little I've found out from the blog in 2016 (Mystery Destination) and put it below.

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The Temple had 4-5 terraces and a hut. It's thought the main two storey hut was built by Victor shortly after the 1967 bushfires. There was a main hut as mentioned, at the end of the terrace was a lean-to workshop. A bunkhouse on stilts, painted to blend into the bush, was also on the same level. There was a cultivated terrace with  a row of small pines (bigger now), two bee hives, a gate, a benched track and a man made water hole. Strawberries were reported as growing there by another visitor. Victor evidently kept an open house and there was a visitors book.

There are several ideas about the site pre Victor. 1. It was an old logging site. 2. That either during or immediately after WWII a sect established its self there, but abandoned it well before the arrival of Victor. This would fit with the name of "Theosophical Temple" given by the WPMT. That's the Wellington Park Management Trust. The Temple burned down c. 1985 and Victor moved to another hut he built.

Victor built Victor's Hut No. 2 after the fire and it's said he became a priest and returned to the Ukraine around 1988. There is an opinion that Hut No. 2 was the Temple. 

I found the following on www.bushwalk.com, by Swifty.

My goodness that goes back many years. I used to attend a high school at the top of Tolosa Street, from where we could see the roof of Victors Hut reflecting the sunlight from the lower slopes of Mt Arthur. We are talking 1977! Needless to say, we wagged school one afternoon and followed the fire trails in the general direction and found the place. It was decorated out with religious themes which changed every few months - Buddhist, Muslim, Christian at different stages, and yes there was a garden below, all fenced in. It was a double story hut, quite comfortable really. Heard a rumour that council eventually got the structure pulled down. I think we even met Victor there once, a special sort of guy.

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