Members Adventures

By Joan Brick While I have always loved camping and bushwalking since I was in Girl Scouts, I only really started doing serious hiking in the last five years.  With work and family activities keeping me busy during the week, the weekends were as just as hectic, thus restricting my time for interests I enjoyed to those after 7:00pm which really was not conducive to hiking. After I left work to care for John, I decided that I needed to find an activity that was both physically and mentally challenging as well as socially stimulating.  A Google search put me onto the Ballarat Bushwalking and Outdoor Club which laid the foundations for many of my hiking adventures with the club and on my own.  My early hikes were close to Ballarat and included the Grampians, Mt. Cole State Forest, Brisbane Ranges, You Yangs, Steiglitz, Great Ocean Road and Werribee Gorge. Each walk, though challenging, only wet my thirst to try new hikes  with varied terrains. The first walk that I put m...

Mon 19 th – Thurs 22 nd April, 2021 Photography by Frances Watt Monday - 10 members of the U3A hiking group carpooled to Dinner Plain near the Mt Hotham resort, arriving shortly after 4pm . After settling into our lovely two storey, 14 bed house some of us went on a short walk to what we thought was Carmichael’s Falls. We found a small, pleasant cascade but as somebody noted “it’s not Niagara Falls!”  It turned out that we should have continued further along the track to see the real thing. Dinner that night was fresh trout bought en route at the Mountain Fresh Trout & Salmon Farm in Harrietville. It’s worth a short stop just to have a wander around this very attractive fish farm. Fun fact 1: Trout tastes like salmon! Fun fact 2: I now know how to pull the bones off a trout with the head attached. Thank you Ian. Tuesday- After a leisurely breakfast we took some cars back along the Great Alpine Road and walked 10kms back to Dinner Plain along the Brabralung Trail. At...