Murrumbidgee River Trail Run

We gathered at Casuarina Sands from 6:30 am, had a bit of a talk and then organised our transport to either Pine Island or Kambah Pool.

Friar, Demetrios, Ray and Nick travelled by car to Kambah Pool, and on arrival, tried to find the start of the trail to Casuarina Sands.

http://www.environment.act.gov.au/Files/
murrumbidgeerivercorridorwalkingtrails0804.pdf

We eventually found that it was close to the top gate, after the first road junction, it was on the western side.

So, we started off, expecting to find a 2 foot wide trail. Instead it was a single width (at best) track, suitable for walkers, just 1% suitable for runners/joggers, our first km took 11 minutes.

The trail was windy, up and down according to the valleys to traverse, plenty of rocks, plenty of bridges across the many small creeks, plenty of droppings from the wildlife, plenty of long grass, plenty of trail markers, each 200 metres, and distance markers every kilometre or so.

The sounds of the river, when we were close to it, proved a good accompaniment to a slow "run".
There were also parts of the river, where it flowed over rocks to form a series of rapids, and it was tempting to think how much quicker, swimming in the river would have made the trek.

After 6.2 km, we detoured slightly from the river and through grassland, where we took a right turn, but realised we were straying too far from the trail, and bashed through high grass to refind the trail. (Through that fence we should have continued in the same line.)

Then down by the river, there were shoulder high bushes to walk through, running was impossible in places. There were plenty of Wombat holes, but no Wombats, and we reached a milestone lookout with 4.5 km to go.

Here a book was encased in a metal cabinet, so we made an entry of our visit, and found an entry from Dave and Ken, who had run from the Casuarina Sands end of the track, and they had got to this point at 7:30am, according to the visitors book entry.
We got to this point at 9:00 am.

The remaining 4.5 km of the track was much easier, although many blackberries had started to grow in and over the track.

Arrived at Casuarina Sands in 2 hours 24 mins 56 seconds, an indication of how hard the trail run was.

We then travelled by car back to Kambah Pool to pick up the "left" Car, and then headed for home.

As an indication, I threw my socks into the rubbish, rather than spend many hours picking the grass-seeds out, and they were also very grotty from the mud and wet conditions.

The shoes are outside the backdoor, full of grass-seeds, on the outside and the inside.

I'll wait for them to dry before doing a restoration job on them.

The restoration was done in the following week and involved a combination of a scrubbing brush, and hand picking the grass seeds, outide in the back yard of course.

Until Next Time.