Eight walkers set out from Norris Park in the heart of Cooma, going uphill to the Reserve and then on walking tracks to get to the trig point (how many people know that there’s a trig point on the North Ridge?) – we always climb up to trig points when the opportunity arises, in this case the climb was about 85m, much less than we normally face, but still classed as aerobic. There wasn’t much to see through the cypress pines that had grown since the trig was last in use, so we didn’t stay for long and continued through tracks and trails towards the Makina Place end of the firetrail, with everybody enthusiastic to keep going despite the temptation for some morning tea at the Pines area picnic table.
We then followed walking tracks up to the ridgeline (a climb of a mere 40m) and followed the ridgeline track north until we accidentally-on-purpose missed a sharp turn in the track and started a descent through the bush towards the creek. It started out quite steep, once the slope lessened we stopped for a slightly late morning tea. One of us saw a parallel between the line of walkers sitting on a log and some turtles that had been spotted in a similar position on a log in the creek a few months ago.
We continued down to the creek and followed it along, passing several pools, which on the right day are very attractive, until we reached the Borrow Pits area, where we left the creek to walk along the flats. Close to the ford we found a sheltered area for lunch. By this time a beautiful day had become cloudy and windy with spots of rain. Once we’d settled down a butcherbird which had been in a tree beside the creek came and sat over our heads for the duration, probably hoping for food (which it didn’t get) and singing very prettily to us as we got up to continue the walk.
We started out along the lower slopes, which were easy going, but were soon diverted into much less easy territory. Although getting lost was unlikely, there was a high possibility of excessive unnecessary ascents and descents as we worked our way through the scrub. We did not go too far astray. First we reached the non-official lookout cum meditation spot (complete with non-official plastic meditation chair) where we stopped for a minute or two before continuing. At one point we were almost bowled over by a pair of wallabies, have no idea what they were running from, if anything, but there was mutual startlement plus emergency stops by the wallabies immediately followed by their change in direction.
Shortly after that we were back on tracks and trails and made our way back to Norris Park. Quite a pleasant little walk, going into some of the less-visited parts of the Reserve and with a bit of off-track walking to prevent things from being too easy.