Olympian Rock Trek
With husband away on business again, Aidan & I planned to go onto a long trek together to check out the Elysium Rock lookout. The estimated return journey from home on foot was 6.2km but after a bit of detouring into town on the way home, we clocked up to 8km by the end of the day!
We were confronted by tourists at the beginning of our journey as we drew closer towards the apex of the big mountain on Craigend St. The Leura Garden spring festival has kicked in with a number of homes opening up their gardens for people to visit.
This is the mini bushwalk we have to cross in order to bypass the humungous bushy traffic island which cuts off Craigend. This design confuses many people when it comes to finding all the houses on the side that we live on because they reach this bushy “dead end”.
This is what this dead-end looks like from a distance. The white arrow indicates where we escape out of. We often catch strange looks from drivers wondering why humans are escaping out of the bush and climbing over a guard rail. I think most of the weird looks are likely to be tourists who are unfamiliar with this passage. It’s funny when we see other neighbours at this point of entry and exit tho, with the exchange of knowing looks at each other because we all know about this secretly hidden short-cut.
This is what the intersection looks like at a further distance, but it’s difficult to really capture the complexity of this intersection. This is the passage we have to take to school, there are no real footpaths and we have to walk right through the middle of the road to gain access to other streets.
On friday, i had two parents stop to offer Aidan & me a “lift” to school, as understandably - it would seem rather odd to “walk” such a long distance. When i was walking back home, another woman stopped to offer me a lift which was funny. Unlike accepting the first kind lift from a neighbour sometime last week, i chose to decline all offers cause we were truly in it for the sake of exercise! Still heartwarming nevetheless. It’s a pretty unique community. When i was a kid, we had so much “stranger danger” pushed at us which always had a strong message of how you should NEVER accept lifts from people you don’t know. So - i see there’s a parent “in a suit” with kids in the car offering a lift to the school. How is accepting a lift from a stranger like that to be deemed as highly dangerous?
These are known as the “Punch & Judy” sticks to Aidan, and i don’t know why. Each time we walk past them, he names each one Punch, and then Judy.
The pathway to our old house. Spring has sprung. Some trees have already lost their flowers while others are beginning their journey of blooming. A pity we don’t have smell-o-vision - it’s quite something to catch numerous fragances coming from various houses.
One of Aidan’s new recurring fixations - the man-holes. He can’t help but comment each time we pass one now, sometimes he needs to stop and examine certain ones a little closer. This is one of the known qualities attached to kids on the Autism spectrum and Aidan’s been like this since he was 2yo. Exit signs, fire hydrants, security cameras, sticks, signs in general - he used to spot them EVERYWHERE. I’m enjoying his new “manhole” theme nevertheless and wonder what the next interesting fixation will be.
We reached the Elysium Rock lookout, only to discover that it was barricaded and required a $2 coin to gain entry - which was annoying because i didn’t have any. As for this sign - i think it’s a whole load of bullshit as this lookout is hardly the best view of the mountains in my opinion - there are many others which beat this one.
My feeling about this view is very much like the expression on this man’s face who’s standing on the right.
Another few views i tried to get by poking the camera through the fence.
Not all was lost due to having no gold coins in my pocket though, as i had read the map and knew there was another Olympian Rock lookout just around the corner and this one was for FREE! hehehe…
We had to wait for these tourist to clear before we could pull out the picnic rug and chill out on the Olympian Rock for a healthy lunch of boiled eggs, tofu with cajun spice, cheese and pears.
“Mummy - can i look down?”
“Erm…ok, but be careful, don’t fall over!”
“It’s very scary, isn’t it?”
“Yes - i’ve been affraid of heights ever since i was pregnant with you!”
My hand couldn’t help but test the strength of this guard rail to see how secure it was as there are some which are really rickety and “wiggly”, but this one was as solid as the lookout rock we were sitting on. Phew!
I thought of Renny’s phrase when he says, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes” at this point. The strong winds were very icy here, so we were glad that the picnic rug could double up as a blanket. It was icy cold here, but pretty warm at Leura village today. The next time we complain about the heat in summer, i’m going to see if we can score some free air-conditioning chill from nature during a heat wave.
I braved the guts to walk out to “the edge” for the sake of taking some shots. It’s hard to capture the panaromic view at this look out but this was the best that i could to. The following photos are views of the cliff sides on either side. Take a deep breath folks - it’s a long way down! Eeeeeep!
…and we’re still alive!
Not sure if this look out is called Olympian Rock because stairs have been carved into the rock, but it was a really interesting feature to this place.
“Mummy! Let’s do this bushwalk going down that way!”
“No! It’s too scary. We should do this one with Daddy so let’s go back up the way that we came here instead!” *lol*
“Oh…alright mum! *grumbles* *laughs*”
“These stairs are exhausting, i need a pitstop!”
We walked over to the Gordon Falls reserve which was nearby that had a pretty good picnic area. Can you guess what this big rock is used for? Let’s see what it looks like on the other side.
A cool picnic shelter with a pretty view too.
The appeal of this bushwalk was because the sign said “Gladstone Rd” amongst other interesting places to go to and i was hoping that we could score a short-cut back home. It wasn’t meant to be after Aidan said,
“Mum! These are the never-ending stairs!”
It really was a steep descent and perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to attempt this walk with such a steep way back up if we got lost. Not a good idea when we’ve told no one that we’d be heading out for a bushwalk.
We stopped at this point for a rest. The ambience of silence here was really beautiful. You could hear the sound of water, native birds but also the sensation of all the trees absorbing it too. Treks that go down like this are really great to ‘get away from it all’.
I’ve sadly forgotten the name of this tree and can’t remember if it was a type of eucalyptus. It’s known for shedding super long shreds of it’s bark that can be a good 50m long. There was another bushtrack near a friend’s place (who was also the guide who taught me about the story behind them) where they had heaps of these trees. The kids had a ball dragging these super long strips of bark and pretending that they were “trains”.
Oh - this made me wince a bit. This house was for sale a few months ago and it would’ve been the perfect one if we had the money. Looks like someone did end up buying it. Amazing east-facing windows - where i imagine the morning sunshine would be quite something to wake up to. *sighs*
This was another interesting design i spotted on the way back into town but not one i would like to live in. Very much like a glass-house style of design and one would hope that the glass is the sort that insulates from the cold weather well enough to keep that heating bill down. It was hard to tell if this house’s orientation would allow enough natural sunlight to enter the home to help heat it up.
A really cute sign at the front of one house. A seat for weary walkers and some water for the dog. It made me laugh because we were weary indeed. Besides, there was an interesting looking chicken on the seat that took Aidan’s interest so we did choose to have another pitstop to rest and recover a bit more.
We eventually arrived at Leura village. Aidan was such a good sport with all this walking, never complaining bitterly about it and this effort was worth an icecream treat. The town was buzzing with tourists. Hard to capture the beauty of our mall over here which features a series of trees on the median strip. I see people attempting to take photos to try and capture the energy of the town but i know they’re never quite going to get it. You’ll just have to visit!
We spotted this fountain over at the Teapot Collection Antique store yesterday so we had to capture a picture of it today for Mrs.Lifecruiser. I immediately thought of her when i saw this one. It’s quite a funny concept for Aidan and me because we had read a really cool book about the history of toilets & washing (cleanlinesss). The woman is washing herself with a pot (where the water comes out of and runs down her body). From vague memory, the egyptians or greeks used to wash like this once, sometimes they had slaves pouring the water out of pots onto the heads of people.
Ok - we need to have another pitstop on the side of the street here because it’s going to be a long walk all the way up to the white arrow and we still won’t be home when we reach it.
My son got his icecream at the shop, and i did pull out a white magnum icecream for myself… until i read the nutritional panel to realise that i would be ingesting a whopping 262 calories with just ONE icecream, so I traded it for a punnet of strawberries that were going for about 28 calories instead. *lol*
Here we go again, it’s another manhole!
Time to attempt climbing over that guard rail to access the mini-bushwalk again. Just one last giant mountain to climb down and then we will almost be at home.
…and stop to blow all the dandelion puffle-balls we can find until we get there!
FIN ~ Time to run a warm bath to let the muscles soak for a while!
