Pig Hill

During isolation we've been collecting 'trig points' in and around Canberra.

I've been careful not to drag us too far outside of the confines of the ACT as the Namadgi National Park is currently closed due to the bushfires and I'm conscious too that if one of us comes a cropper on our walks and twists an ankle/falls down a ravine etc that we could end up being an unnecessary burden on the health system at a time when they need it least.

Trig points are a common site at the top of hills and Canberra has an exceptionally large number of them. From what I can gather as the city expanded trigs were positioned at the top of hills/mounts so that surveyors could get an accurate measure from one point to another. From every trig point you (should) be able to see two more - hence establish a triangulation and thereby build roads/buildings accurately and plot the landscape on maps.

There is some debate as to exactly how many are in the ACT. There's somewhere around 80-100. The complication is that it's not clear whether some are truly 'trig' points or just rocks at the top of big hills and many others have been lost due to the fires (in 2003 and 2019/20). Sadly not all of the trigs are accessible and are now on private land so are tricky or impossible to reach. A few of our walks have curtailed either by huge barbed wire fences or warning signs.

Somewhere along the line Canberra started using 'quadripod' trigs. They are four legged structures with a large black circle on a pole at the top. Presumably the circle is used to sight the trig and I can only imagine that surveyors used some kind of tool/binocular type of equipment to 'spot' them.

Most of these Trig Stations are part of the ACT Precision Zone, a national geodetic survey and adjustment carried out in the early 1970s. The ACT Precision Zone and its associated marks have been the primary control for all new development in the ACT since the early 1970s. The accuracy of ACT Precision Zone marks is 1 in 250,000.

Autumn days are definitely here in Canberra. We've only had a couple of frosts to mention so far, but the nights are closing in and the mornings are chilly. Nevertheless Sunday's weather was beautiful - with a high of 16 degrees predicted the three of us headed out to Uriarra to find the somewhat un-exotically named 'Pig Hill'.

In researching the walk I saw that until fairly recently the hill had been used as a hang-gliding and paragliding jump-off. There's not many clues as to why it had stopped, presumably the landowner had objected.

I'd planned to go via the Uriarra Road then Mountain Creek and Doctor's Flat Road. On the map it looked a fairly straightforward option to commence our walk. Sadly when we reached the gate I'd intended to enter there were really big 'Private Property' warning signs.

It's always hard to know what to do with such signs as Australia doesn't seem to have 'rights of way' in the same way that the UK does. Unlike the network of paths which give walkers access it's often far less clear in Australia where you can or can't go. It's ironic that given the expanse of the country many beautiful walks are effectively restricted or closed to the public.

I'm not a big fan of trespassing, mostly because I imagine farmers with dogs or guns so we drove a bit further along Mountain Creek Road and found another fence without signs. I parked and we began our walk.

It was a fairly decent trek - I suspected early on that we joined up with the path we had been warned to avoid, but we were on a decent gravel path and not causing anyone any harm. I still had a few reservations about it and after walking for about 30 minutes a guy caught up with us on a quad bike.

He didn't seem bothered about us being there. In fact he was more puzzled as to why we'd be trying to walk up the hill. I explained we were trying to reach the trig, but understandably that didn't make too much sense to him either. 

Anyway he zoomed off on his bike and we continued to trudge upwards. A couple of the stretches of the road were pretty steep. I'd forgotten our drink bottles (an absolute sin in Australia) but I figured it wasn't that hot (had it been I'd have turned round) and we carried on.

Eventually the path took us through some beautiful woodlands and after a couple more very steep inclines we came out in a clearing at the top of Pig Hill. In all it had taken us a about two and a half hours to get there and we sat and enjoyed soup and a roll.

The view from the top was spectacular. The beauty with all of the trigs is that they afford lovely views, but Pig Hill is particularly wonderful as you have a 360 degree view across the whole of Canberra. There's a lookout tower up there as well (presumably from hand-glider days) and a pole which looked like it had formerly held a windsock.

Coming down was a lot quicker. We jogged a few sections simply because the terrain was so steep. At one point the road was blocked by some black bullocks, we gave them a wide-berth which meant trudging through a fairly squidgy swamp, but in hindsight I think they'd have been ok. 

We reached our car and headed home. We'd walked just under 12km and apart from wet feet from the swamp/marsh and the carelessness of forgetting water bottles it had been a really enjoyable day.