2022-02-19 -37 144

Location

In a sheep paddock near Broadford

Participants

John
Bridget

Expedition

We were planning on having a drive to have a walk in the bush somewhere anyway that day but we were faced with the problem of picking a particular destination. Bridget had taken a close interest in my recent geohashing expeditions but was yet to make it to a hash herself, so she was very happy to accept my suggestion that we try to find somewhere that looked nice to walk in the vicinity of the hash, which would allow us to make an attempt at the hash on the same trip.

So, we had a peruse of the map around the hashpoint, and spotted a Mt Piper Conservation Area, and a quick google confirmed that there were indeed a couple of nice little walks you could do there - either a climb to the top or a loop around the base of the mountain. It was decided, so we set off a bit before 1pm, making our way from Ascot Vale onto the Hume, before taking an exit that would take us through Wallan and Kilmore and up towards Broadford.

As we neared Broadford we decided that we would attempt the hash first before heading for Mt Piper, as a result we turned on to the Kilmore-Glenaroua Rd. This was a very pleasant quiet dirt road, lined with eucalypts most of the way, and as we drove along it we passed a couple of horseracing stud farms. As we drove further along, getting close to the hash, it became more open paddocks on the left, which we presumed to be the same property as where the hash itself was located. But we were on the east side, and best access to the hash was to be from the west, where it was not far from the road. So we made a couple of left turns following the edge of this property, and soon we were on the west side, and as close as we could get to the hash by road. As we pulled over we were less than 100m from the hashpoint.

Once we were up the embankment at the side of the road, we were met with two layers of wire fencing. The first was a low barbed wire fence in a rusty state of disrepair, and at one point the top line of barbed wire was broken leaving a gap, so it was very easy to step over here. The second fence was more intimidating however, not barbed, but looking like it could be electrified. The paddock beyond the fence looked deserted however, and with no obvious overlooking buildings to be concerned by. We closely inspected the second fence, but couldn't hear any faint buzzing, and couldn't detect any sign of electrification by holding a leaf up to the wire (which google told us was a safe way of determining fence electrification), so we tentatively concluded that although the fence we possibly electrifiable it didn't seem to be switched on. A timid touch with a finger confirmed that the fence was safe.

We stepped through the wire and entered the paddock. At this point we still had around 80m to go across longish dry yellow grass. The first 50m or so was up a rise, meaning that we weren't quite sure what we'd see in the rest of the paddock once we were at the top, maybe some dangerous animals, maybe a farmer who would take exception to our being there. As it turned out though all there was was a group of sheep huddling in the shade of a couple of trees about 100m further on, and they didn't seem too perturbed by our presence. So we reached the hash with ease, screenshotted the gps location, snapped a couple of pics and headed back to the car, satisfied in the knowledge of a hash well done.

From here we made for Mt Piper. Google maps initially sent us down a blind alley from which there was private property at the end with no access to the mountain. No big deal however, we were able to find the actual access road very soon afterwards. A bigger deal though was the state of the actual access road, a pretty rough dirt track that Bridget's Suzuki Swift wasn't best equipped to handle. We continued very slowly but after a particularly bad section we decided to pull over where we could and walk the rest of the way to the start of the walks. In hindsight we could have continued all the way, the road was a bit better again for the rest of the way, but it was a very short walk anyway.

Mt Piper is a not massive but quite steep conical hill rising about 170m from the surrounding landscape. The sign at the bottom said that there were quite rare (but tiny) butterflies known to be on the mountain. Right at the top, all around you could see the canopies of the eucalypts growing slightly down the slope, and these were a hive of activity. Flies, butterflies, dragonflies and maybe a few bees buzzing around furiously, even though there didn't seem to be any flowers or anything for them to be so excited about. The butterflies were tiny, maybe the size of a 10c piece (I think, I'm not sure when I last confronted currency in that form) but they didn't seem to match the rare ones mentioned on the sign.

There were also plenty of birds flittering about the trees, and while most regrettably went unidentified, there was one sort I was able to ID. It was an absolutely tiny bird, and there were heaps of them hopping about in the canopy, with the lightest, most peripheral branches hardly deflecting at all under their obviously miniscule weight. I googled "tiny bird australia" and I discovered that Australia's smallest bird is the weebill, Smicrornis brevirostris, weighing on average only 6g, and this matched up extremely well with the birds we saw before us.

The weebill is so-called because it literally has a wee bill (in the Scottish/Kiwi way of speaking), and the scientific name translates as "Small-bird short-beak" (with smicro- being the Attic/ancient Athenian form of what we are familiar with as micro-). Back down at the bottom of the hill, and out of the sun, we sat at a picnic table and drank some green tea we had brought with us before heading on our way. Back at the car, we decided I would do a bit of driving practice, with me in my 13th year of being on my Ls, and looking towards a trip to Tassie in a month's time where hopefully I would be able to share a reasonable amount of the driving burden, so long as Bridget was satisfied I seemed able to handle her car.

I managed to get us back up the rough track very slowly but without issue, and before long we were in Broadford. We stopped for a snack of a potato cake each, and also got some corn chips for the drive home. Google told us to get off the Hume way before we were expecting, and chastened by blindly following google's instructions just a couple of hours ago, we stayed on the freeway. This, however was a mistake, google did seem to know what it was talking about in this case. The closure of a section of the ring road meant that we were funnelled east into fairly heavy traffic, and then had to find our way through the suburban streets of the north back towards Ascot Vale, probably adding half an hour to our journey. Should have listened to google and got off at that earlier exit and navigated through less crowded and more direct backroads. Oh well, it serves us right for not using superior forms of transport like trains and bicycles. At the very least it was plenty of driving practice for me.

Photos

Break in the barbed wire, allowing an easy crossing
At the hash! @-37.1435,144.9612
Sheep huddling in the shade close by in the same paddock as the hash @-37.1435,144.9612
Gps proof
View from the top of Mt Piper

Achievements

This is hash #12 of the 2022 Victorian Geohash Streak.


Sat 19 Feb 2022 in -37,144: -37.1434851, 144.9612001 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox