Following Yellow Arrows Further

I finished my last post on the verge of climbing up through a stone slot on my way up Hollow Mountain. Anyway, with a squeeze and a lot of scrabbling I made it up through the slot

At the top of the slot I climbed around the base of a tree and out onto a wide sloping shelf of rock; a bit more climbing (easy compared to further down) and I reached the base of this beautiful formation. You can see one of our little yellow arrows in this piccie.

This piccie shows where this formation is in relation to the whole mountain, I have circled it on the original piccie from last post.

The dark shadow at the bottom of the vertical face is a cave which is part of the reason this is called Hollow Mountain.

I sat inside to give you a view from inside.Inside the cave if you turn around you discover that it goes right through the mountain.A detail shot of the stone at the cave mouth, I am absolutely enamored with the colours in this landscape

Leaving the cave a short walk takes you around the back of the massive block of stone the cave sits in. You can squeeze through a chasm and catch a glimpse of the sheer cliffs at the back of the mountain.By now I was fairly tired and to my frustration I had finished all the water I had brought with me (a litre) so I was pretty thirsty. But I hadn’t quite reached the top.

So reversing my way back along the chasm I followed the rock shelf around as it climbed toward the rear of the mountain. I paused to take a shot of the country I had climbed up from. Another low cave extends deep into the mountain here.

Finally I reached the top and looked down into the country behind the Hollow Mountain.

This magnificent formation is called the Taipan WallAll I can say is it was amazing in the late afternoon light and made the climb well worth the effort.You can see my shadow in both these piccies, just in front was a sheer cliff maybe 500 feet straight down. I wasn’t going any closer to that edge!

My climb finished I turned to make my way back down.

As I got back to the top of the front rock face I ran into the two young men I had met at the bottom. They had just finished climbing up “the hard way”.

We had a brief chat and they began to make their way down this time taking the easy route.

I took a shot of them climbing into the top of the slot I had climbed on the way up (and had to follow them down). As you can see it was a squeeze for this fat, unfit, middle aged Aussie boy!

In Which Al Follows Little Yellow Arrows

I am going back to our trip to the Grampians for this post.

On the afternoon of the second day we strolled back to the car from the Aboriginal rock shelter. Deb parked herself in the shade and I limbered up for what I thought was another walk.

The walk we had just done was rated by the park service as “easy” grade.

Not far away in terms of distance was a spot called Hollow Mountain and parks rated the walk as “medium” grade.

Deb thought better of it and stayed with her knitting.

So I set off on my own.

The park guide said to follow the arrows to the top. I paused about quarter of the way up to take a shot looking up at Hollow Mountain"Hmmm" I thought "I wonder where the path goes?"

At the same place I took a shot of the next mountain across.And the first of these yellow arrows.
As you can see it has already turned from a “path” to a clamber up solid rock slopes.

But I thought “they said medium and this doesn’t look too bad. And the peak doesn’t look too high".

Although when I zoomed in it looked a little more daunting.
Up the next section I followed two young men who slipped past me while I took photos (and caught my breath).

As I got closer to the mountain I wondered more and more about where the “path” went.

My next stop was at the base of the cliffs in the first picture.
I took another breather and had a chat to the two young men who were now preparing to climb directly up the cliff. Now with humans in the frame you really get a feel for the scale of the place.

From talking to the guys my destination lay well above the top of the climb they were about to make.

They told me the trail zigzagged around to the left of this cliff.

For the first time I felt a little daunted. Heights are most definitely not my thing.

But I said to myself, “one stage at a time and at any point you feel unsure you just turn back”

I am well and truly old enough to not have to prove anything to anyone!

Climbing the next stage I had to pause to get this shot of this gorgeous cliff face against the deep blue sky (ok and catch my breath again)

Spinning 180 degrees from there I found my next arrow.

There it is pointing up this rock face
To the base of that little tree is about four times my height.

The pale line zigzagging up the middle is worn by boots. You can see someone has cut some notches in the rock to assist as foot holds.

The light on the right is the cliff the young guys were climbing.

Did I say I don’t like heights?

Next stop at the base of the tree. I paused to enjoy the amazing view
The rocky mountain in the distance is where the Gulgurn Manja rock shelter sits.
Hang on where does that arrow point?
Oh that is the one marking the way back down.

I turn back to the rock face.
This slot is where the climb continues. Again if I am continuing I have to climb several times my height . It looks a bit of a squeeze but it isn’t as scary because here I have solid rock on both sides (more about that next post)

In which Al answers questions

A couple of questions were asked about my recent posts so I thought I would attempt to answer them.When I posted about these Aboriginal hand prints at the Grampians, Kathleen Jones asked about the images “Do you suppose it was some kind of 'coming of age' ritual?”

Well that is hard to say, only the people who made the marks could say for sure. Aboriginal people had many levels of knowledge; some of which were available to anyone and others which could only be revealed to people initiated in the right way.
I remember meeting Aboriginal elders in northern NSW who talked about much of the ‘dreaming’ of their people which had been lost. It was lost because their parents and grandparents had refused to pass it on to even their own relatives because they had not been properly initiated in the old ways.

However given that the hand prints were all of young people ‘coming of age’ was probably part of the story. But it was most likely more complex, the platform the shelter sits above has an amazing view far out into the northern plains. Any ceremony here was likely to have been about the ‘country’ that the young people belonged to as much as about them.

Now a little more ‘down to earth’
Susan Flett Swiderski asked of my last post “I take it you have a LOT of waterfalls in your area?”This is a question that is also a little complex. The simplest way to put it is that depends on your frame of reference.

Victoria, the state I live in, is Australia’s second smallest. It is about the size of Minnesota in the USA or about the same size as the United Kingdom

The waterfalls I have posted in the past few months are in an area 473km (295 miles) across. To a Victorian that seems like a huge space but to a Queenslander like me it seems a relatively short distance. Queensland our second largest state is bigger than Alaska (or in European terms bigger than France, Germany, Spain and Italy put together).

Now as a reward for making you sit through all that some piccies of Trentham Falls that I took on Sunday.I spent a couple of hours shooting the falls from many angles. From almost level with the top of the 82 metre (270 ft) falls
to the river bed at the base. That was quite a climb on the way back up!

Waterfall Hunting

Well Deb and I went waterfall hunting again today.

We are back late so I will just give you a taste and say more in the next day or two.

Trentham Falls Central Victoria

Young People

I can’t believe it was Saturday I posted last.

It has been a mad week at work. I seem to be home late almost every night and hit the sack soon after.

Still even long days give me a couple of hours to work on my WIP. I have read it all through a couple of times an am still shuffling sections around and writing bits and pieces to link those sections.

So I guess I’ve sort of begun working on a second draft, but it really doesn’t feel like it.

Now for something different I’m going to share some more piccies from our second day at the Grampians.

In the afternoon we headed towards another spot about ten kilometers (6 miles) from the Ngamdjidj rock shelter.

It was still fairly early so I paused to photograph these odd flower buds

before Deb and I began climbing the side of this rocky hill.

High on the flanks of the hill under a rock ledge very like this

is the Gulgurn Manja Aboriginal rock shelter.

In the shelter is more rock art.
Pictures of emu footprints

Seemingly abstract symbols

And what I think makes this place most special.

For Gulgurn Manja means “hands of the young people” in the local Aboriginal language.

The rock surface is covered with hand prints made by children between the ages of 8 and 12 over many generations.

It is like these young people have left part of themselves in the landscape.

I found it very magical.

A Date

If we haven’t got anything planned come the weekend Deb loves to sleep in.

This morning I had her up relatively early.

Then after getting ready in a lazy way and a leisurely breakfast we caught the 12:00 –All the way in to –Because at the –The –
Exhibition is on for just a few more weeks.

And Deb is a mad keen fan of Gustav Klimt

So while the exhibition is still in town we just had to make sure Deb got there.

Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take piccies in the exhibition.

But as we came out I took a few of the inside of the NGV.
The Great hall

And the front wall of the foyer which is glass covered with a wall of water.Then as we crossed the Yarra River to walk back to the station I had to catch the afternoon light.

The new parts of the skyline.

The old, St Pauls Cathedral

And in some spots where the new dominatesIf you look closer you can see that the old has also been preserved.

Lilli the Wonder-dog

It is just over a month since I last posted about our puppy Lilli.

She is now just four months old and continues to grow like crazy. In a month she has gone from 10.1 kg (22.27 lbs) to 16 kg (35.2 lbs). She is losing the puppy cuteness and is starting to look like a gawky teenager.

I had to share these piccies I took of her having one of her few baths. It is finally getting warm enough to bathe her a bit more frequently.
She is still small enough to just about fit in the laundry tub but not for much longer!
She doesn’t look like it but she actually loves the warm water of a bath, she isn’t at all sure about the camera!

Why the wonder-dog? She is just finishing up at puppy pre-school at the moment and the instructor called her that tonight.

Lilli can already:

Sit,
Drop,
Stay,
Come,
Roll,
Wait politely for her food,
Hold for a wee until she goes outside,
and is more or less heeling when we go for a walk (more or less because things in the wide world can be very distracting for a puppy)

Not bad for a baby.
Are we proud?
You bet!