Mt Bradley

Sunday, 17 June 2018

Twelve of us gathered at Princess Margaret Hospital for our tramp to Mt Bradley. We left in three cars for Kaituna Valley carpark, which is located at the end of Parkinsons Road.

After a briefing from our leader Joy, giving us all the description of the tramp, we departed up the Kaituna Valley Packhorse track. As we climbed higher up the valley towards the Packhorse Hut the fog began to come in, covering the views above. It wasn't to last long, as once we reached the hut it began to clear below us. As for a view of the city, it was covered in cloud. There it stayed for the rest of the day. After a stop for morning tea at the hut, we then went up the zig zag track, approaching from the south side of Mt Bradley, with good views of the valley below. It was a reasonable walk along the track when we discovered a sign giving us the track to the top of Mt Bradley. To our amazement, a track had been marked out by someone with red degradable ribbons along the track to the top of Mt Bradley.

After sitting under blue skies for lunch, we continued back along the track. With a good eye, Joy recognized somebody on the northern side cutting away at the scrub. Who else but Merv!

We all showed our appreciation of his work that he has been doing over the past three years, a lot of passion as one person put it. Beforewe left, Merv showed us where the Eye of the Needle stood. For many it was our first footing on top of the Needle, an amazing feeling around us. We departed soon afterwards on the same track and back to the cars by 4pm.

We were: Joy Schroeder (leader), Sue Britain, Wendy McCaughan, Barbara Purcell, Margaret Clark, Helen Tapper, Mike Bourke, Shiping Wang, Ainslie Talbot, Justin Loh, Graeme Nicholas, Norman Burden (NB)