It’s been bucketing down on Sydney and many parts of New South Wales since Thursday and it will continue to rain for the next two weeks. First we had fire and now we have floods. There is traffic chaos because of the rain. I guess on a more positive note, the creeks, rivers and water catchments can get a bit of a refill. Park and garden lawns can quench their thirst.
Because of the rain, I was stuck indoors for the entire weekend. It drove me insane. I may be an introvert, but I do like to have social contact. It felt like being placed in an isolation ward while under house arrest. I spent the two days watching some shows, reading, writing and some cooking. I’m thinking I should buy ingredients like flour and bread yeast to keep myself occupied by making bread. Kneading dough seems like a meditative experience.
Since I can’t go bushwalking for the next few weeks, I thought I should post pictures of the places I went to in the past weeks.
Saturday 18 January 2020: Despite the rain, seven of us went ahead with this planned walk – plus wading and swimming – along Kangaroo Creek in the Heathcote National Park. The national parks in the south of Sydney have all these wonderful pools to swim in, which is perfect for a hot summer’s day. This day, though, was a rather cold and wet one. But we were ready to get wet and had waterproofed our gear to go swimming through the creek. The point was actually to swim most of it as the bush is too thick to walk through most of the way. Which is why we didn’t care that it was raining – we were planning on getting wet anyway! Anyway all good fun!!!Saturday 25 Jan 2020, Australia Day long weekend: A scene from the Kiama Coast Walk down in the south coast. I started from Gerringong and walked 12km north along the coast to Kiama. The vistas are beautiful and would be a great place to whale watch during the migration season from June to August. Along the way there is a mini blow hole and a big blow hole to see, so look out for them if you do this walk. Sunday 26 Jan 2020, Australia Day long weekend: Abseiling at Boar’s Head! Incredibly good fun with three other friends who let me, the rookie abseiler tag along on this abseil trip. We had to do a via ferrata to get to this slot via a little chimney. Really exciting but not for people who are scared of exposure! Through this slot, you can see Narrow Neck in the distance.Boar’s Head is one of the few places where abseiling and climbing can still take place after the devastating fires. Across the Megalong Valley, one can see many burnt patches. Those parts of the Blue Mountains will remain close for a long while.After the abseiling, we drove to the Mount Victoria and Mount Wilson side of the Blue Mountains to check out the aftermath of the fires. As the picture shows, gum trees are charred and bare. Road signs have melted or blackened. But signs of new life have begun to show with new shoots sprouting from many of the gum trees. The banksia seed pods have also been heat triggered to open to disperse seeds.Saturday 1 February 2020: Back to Kangaroo Creek for a swim as temperatures were scorching at 41°C! Ouch!!! I spent five hours at the pool lounging around and swimming in this ~40m long pool. For those five hours, all was perfect in the world. Sunday 2 February 2020: Went up north to the Central Coast to check out the Bouddi Coastal Walk at the Bouddi National Park. The broad walk was only a small part of the 8.3km walk at the beginning, after that it’s more earth tracks which I much prefer. The coastal walk weaves in and out of the bushland along the coast. We had to backtrack at the end to get back to the car at the start. So in total, I walked for 16.6km – a good workout and one which was more tiring than I expected on this humid day!
