2025-01-30 -36 145

From Geohashing
Thu 30 Jan 2025 in -36,145:
-36.8476752, 145.3793128
geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

On the side of a hill just outside the Tenneriffe Flora Reserve, near Euroa.

Participants

Expedition (by Stevage)

It's a big drive back from Dinner Plain to Melbourne, after a couple of weeks of hiking, lounging about in lodges, swimming, and generally living it up in the high country. But it's home time, and we're going to need to break up the drive.

Brunch at Cafe Fez in Myrtleford. Excellent start. EB's vegan falafel bowl has an improbably high success rate on every component. Incredible. And the mint yoghurt in my chicken and salad thing is exciting me more than it probably deserves. Love it.

Next stop, geohash. The point, only a couple of kilometres from the hume freeway, has occupied me all morning. Google Maps claims it's next to a "Tenneriffe Nature Conservation Reserve", but there's no such thing. A bit of sleuthing, aided by Coyotebush, has revealed the following meagre facts:

  • The point is just outside Tenneriffe Flora Reserve, but within similar trees and rocky terrain.
  • Said Flora Reserve is accessible from a dirt road to the north, Jefferies Road. It'll be at least a 1.5km walk through bushland to get to the point.
  • Parks Victoria confirms that it really is spelt "Tenneriffe Flora Reserve", but can't think of a single other thing to say about it.
  • The reserve's boundary, according to the Victorian Government's VicMapTopo, is the same as what's on Google Maps.
  • There is a hill named Mt Tenneriffe within the reserve.
  • The largest of the Canary Islands, part of Spain but off the coast of West Africa, is named Tenerife.

It's enough to be worth an attempt.

You know how when you drive up the Hume Freeway, there's only a very small number of road junctions, and some of their names kind of stick in your head a bit? Warranbayne Road. Baddaginnie Road. And the evocatively intriguing, Alexandersons Road. Did all the people named Alex Anderson get merged into a single word? Or does this road belong to the son of Alexander? Intriguing though these questions are, it is not, however, why we begin our journey by turning down this road.

We park and, taking note of the 30ºC sunny conditions, don our bravest sun defenses. I whimper as I apply my as-yet-unwashed shamefully odorous hiking shirt and pants. We strap into boots and snake-resistant gaiters, erect our shiniest umbrellas, sling several litres of fresh mountain water, and declare ourselves ready to go.

The first gate doesn't stop us. It's not even locked.

The narrow strip of reserve squished between a horse farm and the Hume is easy. Short, dead grass, no snakes.

Another gate. A mildly baffling misuse of a standard locking mechanism, but it can't hold us back.

The penetrating gaze of a dozen horses, interrupting their busy afternoons of frolicking, feeding and looking majestic. We are not daunted.

A man on a tractor, tending to the horses, pausing a moment to stare in our direction and ponder what these two idiots with bright silver umbrellas could possibly be up to.

We stride forth. A third gate, long past the point of ever opening again, causes us a moment of clambering. EB takes this moment to snag herself cartoonishly on a strand of barbed wire.

It must be said that thus far, it is unclear what "flora" is being "reserved". There's a lot of dead grass, a few unremarkable gums, and one very sick looking shrub.

We stumble down a gully and beyond. We best a rusty fence which has seen better decades. We rise stoically into the hillside dominated by wombat holes and...

Spiderwebs! So many. Any two branches a metre or so apart is odds-on favourite to sport a web with a cute, dense little spider in the middle of it. We dodge around them as best we can. I cop three in the face. It is unpleasant but bearable. Jewel Spiders apparently, "harmless to humans, though the webs can be a nuisance for bushwalkers". What do you know.

We are getting very sweaty. We climb into rougher terrain, sidling around the hillside. Serious granite boulders now. EB's in her happy place, hopping from rock to rock.

The huge boulders are very impressive. It'd be nice to come here on a cooler day, and climb to the top of Mount Tenneriffe, elevation 450m or so. But today we're on a mission.

A wedge-tailed eagle flies spectacularly close, circling a few times before gliding off. I confidently snap a picture and end up with nothing but sun.

And after climbing a bit too high, then overcorrecting, and dealing with a lot more spiders, we find the point! It's great. We're very happy. It's so sunny. We can see mountains in the distance.

It's time to undo our adventure. We scramble, slide, scurry and stomp our way across the hill, hop a few rocks, spot a snake skin, and find an intriguiing accumulation of bees around a wet rock. Are they nesting in the cracks? Drinking?

We miss the gate that we used before and commando crawl under this time. The whole herd trots up to the fence, curiosity busting out of them, but -- wary of provoking an encounter with their owner -- I regretfully pass up the opportunity for a pat. Then a few sweaty stomps and we're back to the car - 4.5km of "bushbashing", no snakes. Perfect day. Time for an ice cream.


Photos

Expedition (by EB)

Returning from Victoria's high country, there are a few usual pit stops: delight in Bright with its eponymous brewery next to a popular swimming spot on the Ovens river; hurtle toward Myrtleford and the wondrous Cafe Fez to explore a huge second-hand and import bazaar, drink thick turkish coffee, taste rose turkish delight and the juiciest, crispiest falafel like your mum would make if your mum wasn't British.

Then comes the point-of-interest desert that is the Hume Highway, marked only by the twin golden arches of the Gundagai bypass McDonalds. Bleak bleak bleak. No rhymes.

But,

on this Day of Days,

I discovered the sleepy town of Euroa ... and it’s also a goer! So good so punny.

Apparently Euroa thinks it is also in the Canary Islands and has named a nature reserve "Tenneriffe", a charmingly misspelled version of its northern cousin. There are also rocks. I like rocks.

With the cicadas rasp-honking in the background, we stomp across crisp, stubbly grass that's been shorn so low you can see the dirt peering through. It's all dead, summer scorched. Someone has made a snowball out of fencing wire. The belted Galloways in the paddock next door couldn’t give a damn about us but the horses toss their manes (the divas!), frolic towards the fence and proceed to stare disconcertingly at us.

I get stuck on the fence - Steve [1] to the rescue. Then up a dry riverbed. Even the bracken is crispy. Very Mad Max. Until we stumble upon my new friend who I name ‘Heart Rock’. My first granite boulder field of the day. It looks kind of like a heart. On a second viewing it looks nothing like a heart. But I am in love. Everything is good now. I will come back and say hello properly but, for now, on to the geohash.

Delightful scrambling ensues, following wombat tracks that look like they were purpose-built for us, guiding us to the hash point.

There are many jewel spiders - tiny little black blobs with yellow snowflakes on their back that like to weave traps for unwary hikers - sticky gossamer between every tree. I deploy frontal robot arms to avoid being kissed in the face by spider silk.

Somehow I am bleeding. Apparently that’s an achievement? Something bites me on the ankle underneath my gaiters. That feels like a bigger achievement. Fortunately, I am 99.9% sure the thing that bit me is not a snake, although I did spot a discarded snake skin glistening white and delicate between two granite boulders.

Something something geohash something. We take a photo.

Then back the way we came. Steve [2] notices a lot of bees clustering around the only water source we’ve seen on our trip - a tiny puddle in the rock. By human standards, it’s a mouthful of water. By bee standards, it’s a vast lake in an otherwise desert landscape. I picture myself slip sliding down the basalt slab, destroying myself, Lake Bee and all its inhabitants in the process. Surprisingly, this does not eventuate.

We commando crawl under the fence this time. Steve [3]’s brain seems to have melted in the heat. Ice cream. The end.

Achievements