Amateur Athletics
WALKING PARTY'S TRIP
By "All Round"
A journey or 66 miles In four days even though done on foot and with "bluey up." sounds easily possible but the twenty members of the Melbourne Walking Club who did it at Easter from Marysville to Noojee, found-what is so generally true of bush tracks— that there is sometimes more than distance to reckon with on a country walk. The party reached Healesville by train and Marysville by motor, camping in the Marysville Hall on the Thursday night. An early start on tha Friday took them over the 11 miles to the Cumberland Flails by midday The swags followed by waggon. The party divided on this stage, the majority going via the Talbot Drive and Cameron Cascades. They had rather a tougher proposition than they expected. Sight-seeing at the Cora Lynn and Cumberland occupied the afternoon, then camp was made in the open near the old splitters' hut on a once grassy sward, bush leaches proving the only disturbing element. Vehicular traffic on this Woods Point road ceases at the Cumberland. The bridge across the river had been obstructed by a fallen giant of a gum tree, and the metalled way forward is grass grown. A clearing party was at work removing fallen timber and renovating generally. The turn-off to McVeigh's (Walsh's Creek) is indicated by a newly-erected finger-post at a point four miles along the road. A pencilled legend adds that it is "a h.... of a track." The Walking Club party agreed that the writer had not overstated the case. A couple of miles down the narrow pad is the abandoned Golden Bower gold mine, where a water-wheel used to work a five-head battery to crush the stone taken from the hillside. Well-grown fruit trees surround the deserted houses of the little settlement, as they do at Bear Creek, another worked-out mining village a little further on. Old official papers scattered about indicated that one hut had been the Bear Creek post-office. Neither settlement would have voted for prohibition, judging by the number of "empties" lying about. The bridle track was hard to follow owing to its overgrown state, and the amount of timber across it. A wrong turning, too, wasted time, and the day's journey of twenty miles was not through until about 8.30 p.m., when the lights of McVeigh's were sighted. Next day (Sunday) the prescribed nine miles to Petschacks looked an easy thing, and the first three to Alderman's Creek, on the Baw Baw track, were done in good time. But from there it was a hard climb through dry country to the old homestead, and late in the afternoon before it was reached. Water for the evening meal could only be obtained with difficulty, so breakfast next morning was had by pushing on a couple of miles to the Loch River at a beautiful spot called The Bower, where luxuriant ferns grew under spreading beeches. The following six miles followed a track recently cleared through the virgin forest. It proved one of the finest portions or the trip. Thence to the railway at Noojee was past recurring settlement. A dip in the Latrobe River preluded the final meal of the trip on the Monday. The train was caught for the city.