Saturday, January 2, 2016

Frank and Jack's Hut

To the south of Canberra is the Namadgi National Park. It's a beautiful area and is really underutilised by Canberrans. The park offers everything from historic aboriginal rock art, to waterfalls and picturesque scenery.

It was a lovely warm day and the three of us headed out with our bikes. After a short stop at the friendly and well-appointed visitor centre I decided to take the kids out on the Old Boboyan Road to find 'Frank and Jack's Hut'. The Hut was built in the 1940s and from the info I'd read looked quite interesting - I figured we could do it as part of a circular ride.

We parked the car and filled in the book that told us we were the only ones who had been out here for the last couple of days and set off.

It was a beautiful ride - a lot of the area was affected by the bushfires in 2003 and this was called the 'regeneration' trail. I'd noted that the hut was just a short ride off our route and after riding for a short while we found a right turn that took us down a large bumpy track.

I followed the track - Eli fell off his bike going down the hill, but jumped up unscathed. Eventually we came to a large plain which we rode across - the long grass catching our legs as we rode. At one point a fly the size of a small bird attached itself to my leg. yuk.

It struck me that not only had we gone down a steep hill, we were now a long way from the original path, it didn't feel at all like it had looked on the original map I had looked at. Not just that but we didn't have a lot of water, nor a map and the signal on my phone had gone several kilometres before we parked the car. The heat of the day was building too. It wasn't great really - and I tried to make sure that the kids didn't see that I was as worried as I probably was.

We retraced our steps - the kids complaining heartily as we pushed our bikes back up the hill. Eventually we got to the main path (I was very relieved).

We rode back to the car park. Frank and Jack will have to wait for another day.


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