Loo with a View
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Relief at high altitude …
It was a mid-Autumn day when we embarked on our journey north.
A group of us, including one of my best friends and my sister’s friends, had planned this long weekend hike, along the challenging Cathedral Range, north-west of Melbourne, for weeks.
We drove through Melbourne’s eastern suburbs and soon were approaching the Great Dividing Range, a series of mountains that traverses Australia’s eastern states all the way to northern Queensland, under the sea and re-emerges in Papua New Guinea to the north.
The highway was now a series of sharp bends, with tall eucalyptus forest and sub-tropical ferns on all sides.
Our “skilled” drivers negotiated these curves with seeming ease, the passengers lurching from right to left, gritted teeth a common sight.
Before long, and to the relief of those present, the mountains receded, and the curves became more gradual, and we were driving along the centre of a broad valley, with farms on both sides. The sun was beaming down, and the paddocks were a golden brown.
We stopped at the small town of Buxton for a small snack — this was the last outpost of civilisation before we reached our destination.
We left soon after, and before we knew it, there it was, the magnificent towering Cathedral Range.
We turned right from the Maroondah Highway onto Cathedral Lane, then onto Little River Road, and before we knew it, we were at the car park at the base of the Range, our challenge awaiting us.
The Farmyard
I had been on this hike twice previously, with groups from College, and was familiar with the first part of our trek. This took us up a gradual incline, with the sounds of bush critters greeting our ears.
Then the track become steeper, with frequent hairpin turns, as we approached the The Cathedral, the left peak in the above picture, and a breathtaking view of the broad valley below greeted us.
