On the 10th May 2016 Rebecca and I headed down to walk the King Jarrah Trail in the suburb of Nanga Brook. Like all trails, it was advertised as being 18km, but they’re all full of lies! Seriously, every walk we’ve done has been advertised as shorter than it actually was. That said, we’re comparing it to the phone’s GPS, so who knows. Maybe they walk on the inside of the trail…maybe we got lost and doubled back…?
We started at a very civilised 9:30 (it took us 1:30 just to get there), but as we arrived the whole valley was cloaked in fog. That was nice and fresh. We parked up as the only car in the car park (its a camping ground most of the time) and went to look for the King Jarrah Trail. Named after the King Jarrah Tree that we were ultimately going to see!
The trail was closed. Recent bushfire was the reason. I thought about it. I mean I don’t want to be that guy that calls for help having ignored all the warnings. By the time I’d finished pondering, Rebecca was going full throttle up the side of the hill. I guess she’d made up her mind.
So, everything was going pretty good. A small hiccup at the beginning I’m unwilling to talk about, but we saw lots of trees, flowers, birds, climbed over some obstacles, but largely apart from the odd incline it was fairly easy for the first 10 or so kilometres. To be honest I wondered why the trail was even had the warning signs saying it was closed.
Then it hit me. Everything around me appeared to have died or burned. The path had disappeared, all the signposts had gone. We were lost.
Future self note: I'd was a wild forest poo!
Maybe I’m being melodramatic. It’s not like we were surrounded by death. In fact the advertised fire had been and gone a while ago, but it had burned any useful sign for guiding us through the forest. Loved the autumn colours, but still lost. We kept heading south. I kind of knew the trail in my head. We came to a stream which wasn’t passable because of all the shrubbery. It looked like a prehistoric jungle!
We doubled back, went up the hill, down the hill, east, west and then found our way to a gravel road, and even found a sign! It gave us comfort we were on the right track. We headed up the hill and even found the king himself!
We re-joined the gravel track and headed east. Ignored all the signs for the downed bridge – no, we never learn), came across a downed bridge, balanced across the stream on a fallen tree and kept on going!
Once we’d passed all the hazard we headed north along the Murray River taking in the sights. Watched a tree collapse in front of us, you know, nature.
