Up The Uplift: An Uplifting Story
Posted Monday 16th September 2024
180 degree panorama from The Island showing the complex of gorges and ridges that lie around its feet.
This is another story of walking rather than trains — but is it?
For some time Ben and I have planned to visit The Island — not the Phillip version which really is surrounded by water but the landlocked version which stands mesa-like between the gorges of Werribee River and Myrniong Creek at the western end of the Werribee Gorge State Park.
In the past we have explored the Werribee, Ironbark and Ingliston Gorges and related walking tracks in the State Park (both halves of it) but had never made it to The Island. As most readers will be aware there is a two level landform west of Melbourne, divided at the place of ancient uplifting and fracturing — the sunken level being the Port Phillip plain and the uplifted area the Western plain standing around 200 metres higher. The scarp is most abrupt in the Bacchus Marsh area, and is exactly the issue that, over a very long time created the substance of our walk today. The uplifted landform near the scarps eastern edge, was progressively cut away by erosion to form the various local gorges, the bottoms of which are close to the level of the sunken land to the east while the residual uplifted land stands well above. The end result includes The Island, standing steeply above its embracing waterways.
The right hand route is a generous single track to start, through delightful yellow box forest…
…but quickly gets into rather rougher country heading progressively down toward the distant Junction Pool.
We started out walking fairly early, around 08·45, before most of the touristy walkers were anywhere near. The track in from the eastern park boundary progressively follows along a no longer trafficable cart track to a junction. The left route heads off to the Eastern Lookout and a short circuit walk, while our way forward was via the right hand route which quickly became single track. This meandered over a shallow saddle in the Yellow Gum forest before dropping fairly consistently but not particularly steeply down to Junction Pool at the confluence of the two waterways that created The Island. Along the way almost iridescent bursts of yellow announced the onset of wattle spring. Apart from these and the scattering of Yellow Gums, patches of saltbush and clumps of inland pigface, there was not a lot of growth, the ground being well covered in gravely rubble from the volcanic origins of the region.
The problem with descending is that The Island got higher and higher, even before we reached the Pool.
What the forest did have was voices. They were not from anyone on the track but from somewhere out beyond. Eventually, through a gap in the trees, we espied a group of people up on the top of the nearby ramparts — the Eastern Lookout which was only a few hundred metres away in a direct line but considerably higher. For some reason sound seemed to carry very well, such that we were rarely completely free from the sense of someone being nearby.
Junction Pool was a good place for a stop for second morning tea and some nibbles, during which an eagle circled overhead. Its ease of soaring to considerable heights was in stark contrast to what we were about to do. Piles of logs and detritus stacked on top of nearby rocks indicated how ferocious floods can be in these narrow gorges, although that was far from the situation on our visit.
Junction Pool made a pleasant stopping point for a bit of a reviver before the ascent to The Island. The low point of the day.
After a bit of a pause we set out across Myrniong Creek. We were expecting a bridge of some kind but the crossing now comprises a rat’s nest of branches and twigs across little more than a boggy patch of creek. This crossing took us from the open forest to what was largely grassland, although the creek gully itself was festooned with dense thickets of bullrushes. We meandered along the western shore of the creek on a narrow single track for about 500 metres of cruisey walking before the track somewhat suddenly took a turn inland and started a remarkably steep and unrelenting ascent to the flat top of The Island. No cruising on this stretch — in around 700 metres the track rose 200 metres at an average grade of around 1 in 3·5, or in more modern speak a 28% gradient. The track appeared to be a degraded farm track, although what sort of vehicle could possibly have ascended such a grade is rather hard to imagine. For some perverse reason thistles were a prominent feature of this part of the walk — mostly desiccated dried out stuff low down but vigorous new growth further up. It seems that a bit of attention might need to be given to this pesky invader.
Ben surges up and up on the lower part of the ascent of The Island.
Max is near the summit, or is he. No, not this time…
…and not this time either, even though we are still above the horizon and going up…
From a walking perspective the upward track was easy to follow although fairly eroded to start with, and without much shade anywhere in its length. One advantage of its road origins is that the inner side (effectively half a cutting) revealed quite a bit about the underlying strata — rather volcanic to start but morphing into something like scoria near the top. The track slowly twisted anti-clockwise as it rapidly gained height, consistently providing tantalising expectations that the summit was near (which it mostly wasn’t). Rather curiously a rustic seat was close to the top (or “EXIT” as the sign would have it) — it rather occurred to us that if you made it that far the seat was probably superfluous.
Now we are there with the curious EXIT sign pointing the way off The Island, just in case, presumably!
Unlike the largely treeless sides of The Island the top was not only flat but well covered in low trees and shrubs, partially following from revegetation done by the current custodians, the Conservation Volunteers. An oval ‘loop’ track through the scrub mostly followed close to the rim making a considerable contrast to what had gone before. On the far (western) side, overlooking the Werribee Gorge, The Granites and Falcons Lookout, there is a very pleasant view point, which for us became an early lunch spot. Although our location was around one kilometre (eagle distance) from Ironbark railway bridge and nearby level crossing, the angry squeaks of V/locities on the Ballarat line were all too evident. We could actually see trains in the Bank Box Loop area as well as around five km further west near (old) Ingliston. In our perambulations thus far we had passed maybe six other people in small groups whereas we could see multiples of that number in the distance doing the circuit walk. We were on the track less used it would seem.
Only a short distance from the upper end of the ascent all is peace, light and harmony — or at least easy walking.
View from The Island — The rock dyke mid picture has forced the Werribee River into a convoluted route. The Falcons Lookout cliff (upper centre) is a major rock climbing venue.
Peering over the side to Junction Pool, now 200 metres further away — vertically. A pile of flood detritus decorates the rocks.
After lunch we meandered on to the the southern prow of The Island which looks straight down (or so it appeared) to Junction Pool and its surrounds some 200 metres or so below. A few kangaroos half way down were supremely indifferent to our presence, presumably being well aware of our incapacity to be anywhere near as mobile as they were in such demanding circumstances. If you launched over the side in a grass toboggan (do they have such things?) there is every chance you would break the sound barrier before you became a permanent stain on the riverside landscape.
Ben at what might be described as a geological stop to inspect the exposed structure at the mid level of The Island.
Stretching over the erosion gulch near the bottom was just about the only exercise the walking muscles got on the way down. All the rest was muscular braking.
In time we continued around the loop until the EXIT sign beckoned downward. Going up is plain hard work (huff and puff stuff) but going down is in many respects is harder — knees turn to jelly and toes become pulp, while all the time there is the ever present risk of crashing to earth on unstable ground. We fortunately had no tumbles and were more than pleased to get back to creek side at the end of our descent.
Meandering along Myrniong Creek back to Junction Pool — a welcome respite from descending.
Junction Pool provided a bit of respite before the less demanding climb back out toward the car. Despite its far gentler profile one of us found this last bit rather hard going, although manageable at a suitably slow pace. By now the opposing pedestrian traffic was something of a torrent — in the end we reckon we passed around 36 other people on The Island track, the vast majority of whom were out in the warmest and sunniest part of the day. Despite the fairly demanding nature of this walk it seemed it is a bit of a magnet for the more adventurous. Not for us — we were back at the car around 13·45, having done the 7·8 km and 399 m of ascending in around five elapsed hours, or under four hours if you allow for our extended stops along the way.
Wattle spring provided a bit of additional colour to the day, as we trudged back to the car.
Not far ahead we passed over the high point of the return journey and had a rather cruisey walk from that point to the car.
I began this story with “This is another story of walking rather than trains — but was it?” It indeed had a rather curious train aspect to it that was quite unexpected. Soon after we topped out on The Island, as we neared the squashed end of the loop, we both thought we heard a steam whistle. Not possible thinks I, it is indeed a rare event for steam on this line and even more so at this time of day. But no, another whistle beamed across from afar. We took a short cut (20 metres) through the thickets to the nearby rim and from that point could clearly hear the labouring of what sounded to be an R class loco having a fairly energetic (and noisy) battle with Ingliston Bank. We couldn’t see it at this point but could quite clearly hear a lot of hard work despite the distance.
No train in view here, but we saw it on the middle horizon in among the line of trees. Rather too far to get a useful shot, although the sound was not so constrained.
The fireman must have really been on top of his game, given the almost complete absence of any tell-tale smoke. A whistle, we later decided for the Ironbark crossing, then a slowing pace as it got stuck into the last of the serious 1 in 48 stuff was still all out of sight until it eventually came into view, albeit a long way off to the south and up somewhere well towards old Ingliston. All the time its exhaust reverberated across the space between us, punctuated at intervals with whistles for crossings or just line-side observers. In total it must have been in sight and/or sound range for well over ten minutes. Not only was the presence of a steam train a complete surprise but we were in probably the best possible position to hear and see it for the whole day. Synchronicity or just the PGS (Personal Guidance System, aka intuition) at work? Whatever, it was a nice little diversion on what was otherwise an excellent day out wanderwegging.
We did find an easy crossing of the Werribee River near Junction Pool, which could be an alternative route to some interesting untracked walking in open but rough country between The Granites and Falcons Lookout. Just maybe!!
