I made this map for J. The kilometres may be a bit off. J’s Garmin watch steadfastly recorded about two kilometres less than my watch on every outing. On the first afternoon of J’s arrival, we walked just 2.5 kilometres, a little loop walk that takes in a beach, a headland, and a bridge over a creek.
Next day I drove us up to the Dam Loop near the Botanic Gardens. We walked around the Dam Loop. The mountain bike trails would have been hopping but we only saw two young blokes who had randomly picked a “blue loop” from TrailForks and ended up on the Dam Loop which is all but abandoned by mountain bikers these days – with good reason - there were half a dozen trees down, the track is eroded and covered in sticks and even logs. After the loop, we went into the Botanic Gardens for a beverage at the cafe and then with a handy laminated map the volunteer at the counter gave me we walked around all six of the giant trees in the Gardens. I had remembered the spotted gum at the far southeastern end of the Gardens as bigger than it was in life. Like being a child and finding adults tall then growing up and realising some adults are actually quite short.
On Monday, we all three drove down to McKenzies Beach to walk the Munjip Track. I had planned for us to take the bus – I love public transport and I love taking the bus to walk home – but J’s morning routine seems to be much longer than ours and I wasn’t sure we would make the first bus. As it was a public holiday, the service was pretty sporadic. McKenzies Beach used to be a great surf beach but all the east coast lows have steepened the beach so much that it’s almost always a shore dump now. It was a glorious day on the Munjip Track and we did all the side tracks to lookouts. At Mosquito Bay we discovered we were rather hungry so we had lunch (thanks for the burgers J!) at the cafe. It was busy. I will never understand how or why people will drive down from their holiday home to wait half an hour for someone to make a middling burger when you could make ten burgers that are more delicious for the same price at home in half the time. But, as my grandma used to say “there’s nowt so queer as folk.”
Tuesday, I did weight training before we cycled into town, over the bridge and around the shore to the Cullendulla Nature Reserve and the mangrove boardwalk. I thought this would be a rest day for J after the previous two days, but, given her Garmin body battery was 9 when we got home and she wrote: “up and down hills,” for the first and last half hour even though there aren’t really any hills!
Our longest walk, at six hours, was from Cookies Beach to Maloneys Beach. J and I drove to Cookies Beach (so many cars!) and walked to Maloneys Beach while Doug drove to Maloneys Beach and walked north. We did all the lookouts, of course, but our pace was quite slow so don’t be deterred by the time taken.
