This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Easy/Medium Day walk - January 27
by Henry Babbage
Trampers: Nikki, Henry, Becky, Sam, Murray, Greg, John, Andrew. On the 27" of January we woke to a cold, overcast morning that didn’t make our planned tramp up Main Ridge (and down Butterfly Creek) over at Days Bay seem all that appealing. Nevertheless, all of us were down at Queens Wharf ready to catch the ferry at 10am (except for Nikki who drove instead). After some quick introductions I learned I wasn’t the only person on their first tramp with WTMC. We made it over and headed up the road to find the beginning of the track. We came to a dead end and couldn’t see the track we were looking for. Thankfully the locals came to our aid. The family in the house at the top of the street invited us to walk through their property to the neighbouring road where the track entrance was! We began a steep trek up the hill through dew covered bush on a path only wide enough for single-file. We coped very well on the slippery, uneven ground and concluded this was probably the “Medium” part of the “Easy-Medium” description. We continued to climb as glimpses of a view of the beach and Solmes Island teased us through the gaps between the trees. _, I
On making it to the top we stopped for a quick bite to eat and some of us removed our top layer which was now soaked from bashing through the wet bush. It was so humid though that the wet bush was more refreshing than annoying. We proceeded along the top of the ridge and welcomed what was becoming a sunny day. Unsure of what classified as “The Lookout’ on the map, we walked until we found it at a small, sunny clearing on the very top of the hill with two benches where we sat for lunch. The view was beautiful. We looked right out over the bay where a cool breeze provided great sailing conditions for the many yachts on the water sparkling in the sun.
We then enjoyed a downhill walk to Butterfly Creek where we found a map which showed part of our tramp wasn’t even drawn on as a trail. Occasionally we passed people down there on the way to the picnic area. About 3pm we turned around and headed back up the “easy downhill” part which now became a tiring uphill climb. Plans to buy ice-cream once we got back into town seemed to be the main motivation for us to get to the top of the hill. Our reward for reaching the top was a leisurely walk back down towards the road where we aimed to catch the 4:15pm ferry. We made it just in time but had to postpone ice-cream for another time. Overall it was a really enjoyable tramp with views which made the challenging climb at the start well worth it.