What – Wimmera River Loop – lockdown route
Where – Weir Park return loop via ANZAC bridge
Distance – 4km
10 words – Old favourite, urban getaway, noisy cockatoos, drowned trees, great asset
So who would have thought we’d be in the middle of a snap lock down in week 7.
With 5km limits we are heading along the old favourite Weir Park-Anzac Bridge loop.
I forgot a mask on my morning walk and cut it short and then finished the walk in the evening. You are getting a mix of experiences with this one.
At the outset there is something to be said for getting up early and seeing a sunrise over the Wimmera River. Different times of the year the viewpoints change and the colours are seriously just about everything in the rainbow if you add up over 12 months.
Sometimes you can even get rainbows if you are lucky.
So this walk is a loop measured from my house a bit over a block from the entrance to Weir Park. I usually head east in the morning so I am walking into the sunrise.
Today (on part one of the walk in the morning) it is a nice combo of low grey clouds and sunrise. Not a giant, technicolour wow sunrises but pretty good all the same.
A good spot to start and just look down the river is the jetty at the end of Drummond street.
I also like to head out to the island that is joined by a boardwalk at one end and you can get a good vantage point on the south side.
There is a seat dedicated to Hugh Jenkin who was a well known photographer from Horsham who died in 2002.
Hugh knew a good spot to enjoy the sunrise too I bet.
Today it turns on a some pretty impressive yellows, pinks and oranges before dissolving into the grey clouds. I realise I have forgotten my mask and dissolve back to lockdown too.
Later in the week I follow the same path at dusk. It is 33 degrees, muggy, grey and feels like a calm before the storm. The water is dead flat. But there is no peace.
The corellas are in a flap. If you did not realise what was happening it could be quite frightening. They scream to each other, they dart from one side of the river to the other and line up on trees, bridges, shade sails and wires.
You wonder what they are thinking? Research suggests they mate in the same nests and have partners for life- maybe they are arguing or debating a point. They are also really playful and I see this with birds hanging upside on wires or branches.
Over the past decade or more they have proven destructive, after playing (and chewing) on a wooden house or cables or pristine turf.
But you do wonder whether we humans need to own some of this. Apparently they enjoyed a diet of native yams before Europeans arrived but the arrival of onion grass from South Africa boosted their food supply and numbers, Then we replaced native grasslands with tasty crops and the birds just boomed.
In Horsham itself building the weir, which has drowned a heap of huge eucalypts, has created a housing estate of perfect dead and hollow trees for them to live in too.
Putting on my Polly Anna hat I will pose the questions – “is their chatter that bad?” If you lived on a farm, there are sheep and cattle and chooks. This is just another version of rural living.
They form a formidable lineup on top of the shade sail covering exercise equipment and they are channelling trapeze artists on the ANZAC Bridge.
These birds are everywhere, but after a while you become accustomed to their constant calls and they meld into the landscape.
The sky is pretty grey and it looks like we will have a fairly uneventful sunset until all of a sudden there is one last gasp. Trees suddenly turn gold as the sun provides a final flash of brilliant light before heading west for the night.
That was pretty impressive but it has gone by the time I get to the footbridge that provides a great spot to look over the river and creates an excellent walking loop to the river’s south bank.
The South Bank track has been recently upgraded with two new weir bridges so that a billabong can be refilled and crossed.
Tonight is the first time I have seen this area with water and although it is nearly dark I see trees that have been crowding around empty holes for years now sit in water. You can almost feel them smiling.
When I approach the main weir, corellas’ chatter is overshadowed – or drowned- by water gushing over the edge of the weir.
A beautiful sound in the Wimmera.
All light has gone when I reach the car park but there plenty of people around, kids playing, dogs being walked and parents packing up after picnic dinners.
We are in a pandemic, it is night time, I am on my own surrounded by strangers but I could not feel more safe, secure or content.
Happy days indeed as I finish a late evening adventure.
52 weeks 52 walks 