This walk takes place on Gandangarra Country
Back in April, for my two-year celebration of being cancer free, I went for a walk in the Southern Highlands at Fairy Bowers Falls. My Wife, who was working that day was disappointed as she loves the highlands. So in the lead up to our trip to Iceland, I suggested she do some walks with me in order to test her fitness (she had been exercising in preparation for some of the mountains in Iceland), and so we settled on doing Glow Worm Glen, as it had originally been my plan to do that on the same day as Fairy Bower Falls but I had run out of time. However, the Friday before the weekend we planned to do it my Wife became sick, and so we delayed it to the following weekend on the Sunday.
The next weekend arrived, and the rain began early on Saturday morning. However, it had stopped by the afternoon, and while looking at the forecast for Bundanoon on the Sunday we decided the weather would be alright and so I set an alarm for Sunday morning. We awoke and I had to try and get Orla (my Dog) ready to go outside for the day. However, as I lay in bed drinking my coffee, she cuddled up next to me, tucking her head in-between my armpit making me feel guilty about having to leave her.
"How will you cope in Iceland?" My Wife said as I cuddled Orla, riddled with guilt.
We got ready for the walk, and I placed Orla out the back with her Kong that was stuffed with treats (which she usually takes and eagerly runs away with) however she simply sat down with her sad puppy Dog eyes looking at me, wondering why she didn't get to come with us.
My Wife decided to take her car, as I was beginning to clock up the km's on mine. "Is it OK if I play Taylor Swift?" She asked.
"You're the driver, you get to pick the music." I replied and we began our way to Albion Park and up Macquarie Pass, which had both side of its bottom carparks already packed, and Clover Hill Road was too as we drove by it.
My Wife didn't need any GPS to find her way towards Bundanoon having worked up there for a time at a cafe owner by our friend Alicia's Mum. As we approached Bundanoon I told her. "You know I've wanted to do this walk for years?"
"Have you?" She asked.
I told her the story about staying at the Bundanoon YHA, that I won't repeat here as I wrote about it in my Mount Jellore blog. I mentioned that it was the walk I thought I was going to do when I did Fairy Bower Falls, (even though the actual walk I had planned to do afterwards but ran out of time as I drove to Mittagong to buy a stout instead). I told her I remembered that it wasn't too far from the YHA as I thought my Dad had taken my two younger brothers to the walk on foot. I said I remembered it being on top a valley looking down into it. I said I remembered there being a lot of pine trees and that my brothers had come back with ticks all in their heads.
As we entered Bundanoon I pointed to a brown sign on our right pointing up a hill on our left. My Wife turned and drove to the top of the street, where we parked and quickly sprayed some Bushmans on our shoes and legs to avoid leeches. We walked down the road just down from the top of William Street past the houses where we found the start of the walk.
"This still isn't looking like the place I remember." I told my Wife.
"Maybe where you stayed was over-looking Wingello if you remember all the pines." She said.
"Maybe..." I said while thinking. "Maybe and he just took them to here and I didn't see the spot where they actually walked. It was years ago, I could just be misremembering."
We made our way down the stairs that had people's properties backing onto it. As we reached the base of the first set of stairs, I stopped to look at a tree that I thought looked beautiful up against an old dry stone fence. I was taken by how green everything around us was looking, compared to a lot of the natural areas around where I live, with the haunting white bodies of gum trees and dry yellows grasses.
We continued along the path that flattened out now moving in and out from underneath the canopy as I waited for the walk to begin our decent into the Glen.
I was struck by how in such a very small distance the scenery had already changed so much as we walked through reeds on either side of us, hitting some more steps that were once more surrounded by deep greenery,
I pointed to the plants growing low along the side of the steps.
"It looks like parsley." I said.
"One way to find out." My Wife said, taking a piece that I thought she was going to eat, however she simply put it to her nose and sniffed it. "It's not parsley." She told me.
"Orla would love this walk." I said.
My Wife began talking about how Dogs weren't allowed on many walks in Australia, compared to when we had been in the UK, again dreaming that she could live in the UK instead of Australia.
The air was chilly in the highlands, at 9 degrees Celsius. "I wish I had brought an overshirt." I said.
"Are you really cold?" My Wife asked as I had been cold in her car the whole drive while she had the air conditioning on.
We soon reached a split in the track one heading ahead to Glow Worm Glen, the other heading right to an alternative car park.
"Maybe that's the carpark my Dad took my brothers from?" I questioned, before pointing out it really wasn't very car to Glow Worm Glen. My Wife pointed to each sign and the distances they both said to Glow Worm Glen, both offering inconsistent distances. My Wife suggested that we would walk through to the other carpark for a look seeing as we had driven so far for such a short walk. "I guess I probably might have had time to do it after Fairy Bower, if it wasn't for my forgetting to pack water and driving to Mittagong to buy a stout."
We continued up and I noticed a lot of trees had been cut down along the track.
We walked around the corner and soon came to the last section of stairs heading down to the Glen.
We slowly walked down these stairs looking into the gully.
We walked down onto the built platform, which I had to wonder if it was there all those years ago when my Dad and brothers had come down. It was obviously there to stop people walking in any further and disturbing the area, although I commented to my Wife that people who wanted to would simply just jump over anyway.
I had known that during the day we wouldn't be able to see any glow worms but I didn't know the walk was going to be so short (as I didn't want my Wife trekking through the bush in the dark, but the walk was ultra short). She suggested we come back in Summer with our friends Stuart and Megan and come at night to see the glow worms. I said that would be a good idea and that we could all go out for dinner beforehand (as it's a late sunset in Summer in Australia, particularly in NSW because of daylight savings which I hate).
We stopped and ate the cliff bars we packed, feeling like we over bought on food for the walk. We sat in the silence enjoying the views and clean crisp air, before we decided to head back up and walk to the alternate car park. "Sorry it's not much of a physical test for you for Iceland" I said to my Wife.
We soon reached the turn off to the other carpark, which according to the distances on the sign was almost as long a walk as the entire walk from William Street to Glow Worm Glen.
I thought this crossing was a bit cooler than the walk we had taken and said out loud "Maybe this is the more adventurous route."
I told her as we crossed the little creek it reminded me of one very particular section of the walk to Mount Jellore.
As we crossed, I told my Wife to watch her footing, as the earth was still wet from the rain and we needed to walk uphill with nothing to hold on to. She said that sometimes it was better wet as the topsoil could be more compacted, however I had walked enough to know about slipping over in the mud, however she was proved right, and the soil was pretty firm.
As we reached the top we were exposed to completely different scenery once again as wel walked through cane-like plants that my Wife commented reminded her of the Bamboo forest we went through in Vanuatu on our way to Cascade Waterfall. I commented that I had had the same thought, though I don't know why, as the two didn't really look much alike at all.
We continued weaving through, and the path twisted and turned.
"You're lucky I'm in front." I told my Wife, wiping spiderwebs from my face for the umpteenth time.
"Crocheted beanie." I said, as we walked past someone's beanie they had placed along the trail.
"Hey crotched beanie." She said, having not heard me just say it. She said something about the type of materials or sizing or something that as someone who doesn't crotchet went right over my head. "I could make that in... an hour and a half."
"An hour and a half? It took you weeks to make mine." I retorted.
She than begin to go in about the different sizes and materials and my eye glazed and I just nodded.
We came a split in the trail, and I suggested heading right, which I thought would head towards town before I noticed the pink ribbon tied to a branch indicating that it was the right way to go.
I started a little rant about how a few of the walks I had done lately didn't really have good markers, and often had a variety of trails splitting off from them with no indication of which way was the right way to be going, thinking in particular of my recent walk up Saddleback Mountain. "They always have signs pointing the way at obvious points." I whined.
I made a comment about all the trees with their black bark and wondered if they were recovering from the bushfires, or if they just looked that way, mentioning that in the house I grew up in as child we had a big gum tree out the front with deep dark bark with red underneath that definitely had never been burned, so I didn't know if some trees just looked this way.
As we rounded the bend we came to a large section of wattle.
"Oh look honey, your favourite." I said. As she had already been having some allergies from the small pieces of wattle we had walked past so far.
I started talking about a beer I used to be able to buy from the local bottle shop. A wattle seed ale called 'Beyond the Black Stump' by Australian Beer Co.
"That was my favourite beer." I said, explaining it was like a dessert beer. A beer you would relax and just enjoy the flavour of it, not the sort of beer where you would sit there and down a six pack. "I wish I could find it somewhere."
Soon the track split again, this time heading left and right with no marker and not even a ribbon to differ the paths. I suggested we head right, as that would be the direction back towards the Glen, so I figured more like to lead to a carpark. We followed it down and around a bend and I could see the back of a sign before the bush opened up to a field. We walked around to view the front of the sign.
"Whoops." I said, remembering when the exact same thing had happened when I had walked Bong Bong Pass with my Dad. "I wonder why it's shut I said, walking out to the field which honestly just looked like someone's back lawn and was even behind some houses. I saw another sign laying face down amongst a fallen tree and I turned it over.
"Well, it's not a carpark, but maybe you walk down past these homes from the carpark? Or used to before they shut it." I questioned.
We decided to head back in and follow the left track instead just to see where it went.
"You see what I mean about signage though?" I said. "If this track is closed there should have been something back at the big proper sign near Glow Worm Glen."
My Wife, who was behind me, was now in the front because we had turned around, and I took some photo's. I snapped some photo of her walking through before she noticed.
"Are you taking photo's of me?" She asked."
"Yeah, just you walking." I answered.
"If you post that on Facebook I will reply it's a photo of my back because of my allergies using the animal crossing meme."
"Animal crossing meme?" I asked, having never seen it.
She tried to load it up but there was no reception where we were.
"Well let's just hope no one tries to murder us." I said.
The path begam to open up, and we crossed a tiny little stream where I noticed a leaf had got itself stuck in the front of my now falling apart joggers.
We both discussed how bad our joggers were, with me saying I would wait until after Iceland to buy a new pair. As we continued walking up the slight incline, I commented that the look of the track reminded me of Gibbergunyah reserve.
As the incline got a little steeper there was a stump surrounded by Wombat poos that I said actaully looked like a decent toilet bowl, picturing a drawing of a cartoon Wombat using it as a loo like a human.
We rounded the bend and could see another sign facing away which we instantly knew was another closure sign, the biggest clue this time was the large piece of orange plastic that had been placed in front to obvious stop access, with a big cut showing people obviously chose to ignore it.
We walked to the end as I wanted to see the area which looked like a car park.
I also took a photo of the white closure sign.
"Don't upload that!" My Wife snapped at me, as it showed we had entered an no entry area.
I told her that it didn't matter, and if anyone had tried to fine us, I would simply contest it, as we had entered from the other way that didn't have any notice asking us not to enter.
We made our way back now and I asked if we should wander down the other track where the path first split.
"We did didn't we?" She said.
"No, the very first one." I said to her as she couldn't remember.
We made our way back to that first split and followed it less than a minute down before it simply came to a dead end. We started back towards the car and we hadn't even reached the beanie before I could hear the voices of people loudly speaking.
"God this is why I hate people." I said. "They come out, talking this loud and wonder why they don't see anything. There's no reason to even speak that loud. The people in the houses near the entry to the walk must hate it."
As we approached the turn of to the actual carpark and Glow Worm Glen, the group became insanely loud and you could hear their entire conversation as we crossed down to the little creek just down from signs where we noticed small little caves in the side of the slope, hidden by plant growth.
As we reached the signs the group was there and I could hear they were talking about how they had tried to start the walk from the other carpark that we had just walked to, only to see the closures. I nodded a courteous acknowledgement of them before making our way uphill and back to the car.
My Wife enquired about how her fitness seemed as we made it up the last set of stairs and back on to William Street. I said she did well and said that she had also walked well on our recent Bondi to Coogee walk.
As we reached the car I asked if she wanted to go to Bundanoon for lunch, and she suggested that we walk down and into town and make a day of it. So, we headed down the street, as my Wife admired some of the street's gardens and got to pass a few Dogs along the way, always a cause for excitement.
We stopped out the front of what was now the 'Potter's Cafe' where she used to work, she took a photo to send to her friend Alicia and we made our way through the main street before deciding on getting fish and chips and calamari from the Primula Cafe and a coffee and chai each. While waiting for our order my Wife recounted how when she worked at the cafe she would often have people came in who wanted to order chips, only for them to say they didn't sell them. "But the cafe down the road does!" They would exclaim.
"Did you tell them they could just go to that cafe then?" I said, laughing.
We took it across the road and ate at a covered park bench, when my Wife asked if we could check out the nursery that was behind and a part of a secondhand shop. I said I quickly wanted to have a look at the information sign just down from us, that looked like a giant bus stop. As we reached in there was a map of the area and showing some of the walks. I pointed to Fairy Bower Falls following along with my finger the way I had walk and the lookouts I had driven to afterwards.
We crossed the road and made our way through the secondhand shop, that I was way more into than a 31 year old should be, telling my Wife that places like this where like 'Antiques Roadshow' and in a way, mini museums with the sort of items they had. My Wife rushed me through to the nursery that didn't have a lot of stock, before I made her have another quick peruse through the secondhand shop.
"Are you done?" She asked. Before we began our way back to the car, feeling that, even though it had been a long drive, we had made it a day well spent.
