YENGO NP – 5 May 2019
I’ve now been searching for the aboriginal rock engravings, “two Bird Men” or “two Emu Men” for at least four years. Admittedly I’ve only gone to the area once or twice a year, but I hadn’t given up hope of finding these elusive rock engravings, and I’d dragged unsuspecting friends with me each time, to NO avail! This weekend wasn’t any different, so I’ve washed my hands of this grid reference once and for all, and erased the GR from my map!
Thankfully, we had another site to look for so all wasn’t lost. Heather (who’ll go anywhere with me) R, Brad M, and Greg G joined me for the day, it would also serve as a fitness walk for me so that I don’t lose the fitness that I think I’ve gained over the last three weeks.
So, only an hour and a half into the walk and we’d found our first objective. I had thought about crossing a creek and climbing a big hill, but for some reason decided that walking along the creek sounded better. So, we wandered downstream.
We came across a black snake (on my preferred campsite – wont be going back there), and continued upstream to the “lemon tree”, not very many lemons on it this time, brought home half a dozen.
This trip I decided that we’d walk upstream in a side creek, this was the only spot that I hadn’t explored looking for the bird men. We walked upstream about 200m and could see that there weren’t any rock shelves beyond, and we were pretty close to the GR. So, we climbed about 300m up the hill, looking for rock platforms (none), and then got on top of the cliff and hunted around in the vicinity of the GR, still no rock platforms, nothing even remotely looking like a spot that the Dharug people would have used as a rock grooving site. I was out of puff by the time we got up the top of the hill and had lunch (maybe the lemons in my pack slowed me down).
By this time I’d had enough and was well and truly over looking for the bird men site, so decided that we’d drop down off the opposite side of the ridge and head back to the cars, ah well, it was 2pm anyway, we’d been at it for 5 hours.
Up to this point in time, the walk had been relatively easy, but dropping off the ridge was harder than expected, lots of zigging and zagging to avoid serious drops and at one point Greg muttered “this is more like the Marilyn walks that I remember!” (he’s been walking a lot with NPA and was looking to get a fix of off-track walking).
We were back on the main fire trail by 3.30pm AND we’d found where the trail started that we should have been on in the morning – stood out like the proverbial dogs balls, not that I’ll be using that trail again in the future.
Despite not finding the Bird Men, was a nice walk, only two big “ups”, and lovely walking in the dry creek beds. Thanks for joining me on this fitness walk Heather, Brad and Greg!
i am reliably informed that Pina Coladas are presently the “in drink” in Havana, especially at noon i.e. between sunrise and sunset
Awesome, I love Pina Coladas!
Well I was a happy bushbasher. Im happy to try again if the urge presents itself Marilyn 🙂
Once I got into it I was. Nah, am happy to try somewhere different next, although ask me in a couple of year’s time, there were some nice campsites we saw (other than the black-snake one).