Interim – Another Supervolcano

8-10 October 2024

Cathedral Ranges State Park and Mt Torbreck

Taungurung Country

The track is very steep and eroded. There are thigh-high step-ups onto rocks and exposed roots. At some points the trail ahead is almost head height, and you pull up with your hands in places that will become footholds on the way back down. It’s just a taste of what our hike tomorrow will be like. Rugged.

The track from the campground starts out fairly mellow as it winds its way uphill and onto a low ridge of rocks. There are a few places that could do with some steps, but the soil has dried enough from the previous day’s rain that it isn’t slippery.  Your calf muscles definitely get a nice stretch in that stretch of track, however. 

After the mellow uphill to the ridge that gives views of the peak you are about to climb, you traverse down a bazillion steps to a creek. 

Then you start the steep climb to the top with many more rock steps over 1.5 kilometres to a more gentle section high on the back side of the ridge. You can skip your leg day or Stairmaster workout the day before – there’s plenty of quad activation on the Jawbone Trail up to the main ridge in Cathedral Range State Park.

I climb both North and South Jawbone Peaks. Today’s 8km hike is just a test for me to see what the tracks are like, so I have a better idea of how long it will take me to do the 12.7 km hike tomorrow. 

From the peaks, we get views of the main ridge and its slanted sandstone rocks. These rocks were all laid down in a deep sea as the Australian continent was growing. The rocks were uplifted during the Tabberabeeran Orogeny – a period of mountain building I’ve described before since it tells the story of a lot of rocks in the region.  The most impressive view of the tilted rock range is from the highway to the west where the peaks rise in a long, vertical line directly above the valley floor. 

This afternoon’s hike confirms that the rocky bits along the ridge will be slow-going and that I can do the uphills twice as fast as the directional signs indicate. We’re good to go for the Northern Circuit hike tomorrow.

Back at the campground, I set up my tent as far away from the 3 other campers as possible so that I don’t have to be in the direct line of campfire smoke. I fix up a late lunch – a salad with wild-caught salmon and a homemade red capsicum hummus on top.  Aaaah, to be car camping with an esky and not five days into a ride after resupply when it’s just another night of rice and lentils!

As I’m sitting there eating my salad, a magpie swoops in from my right and grabs a piece of lettuce as he goes. WTF!? Kookaburras are known to do this sort of thing, but I’ve not seen a magpie do it before. The magpie drops the lettuce – not interested in that – and then comes back to sit on the big log in front of me where I’m resting my feet. It sits there and stares at me, with a dab of hummus smeared on its beak.

It then proceeds to fly directly AT my face from the log. Well, you bastard! I hunch over the salad as the bird then lands next to me, hops along, and then flies back to the log. I throw a stick at it. It hops away, comes back. I throw a little rock at it. Same thing. Then he flies directly at my face again! 

Oh, you bastard! To sit there with that hummus on your beak and threaten me for my salad. Isn’t it enough that your species has to obnoxiously swoop for four months every year while I’m riding? Can you not give me a break while I’m trying to eat?

It finally gets the message and leaves me alone. I crawl in the tent pretty early, as it is quite cool outside and expected to get to 0 degrees tonight. I’m cosy in the tent though, and I read a book about metabolic health from a surgeon who saw the light re: silos in western medicine and now runs a functional health practice. 

I wake up around 11.30pm and need to pee. I see the light on the tent and think the moon must be out. As I crawl out of the tent, I note that there is no moon. It is just some campers on the other side of the campground with huge LED lights on their camper trailer that are producing enough light to guide alien spacecraft in for a landing. Sheesh!  They’ve got a big campfire going, too. I hope the magpie is over there bothering them. Maybe not, he wouldn’t be able to see where he was flying with those bright spotlights.

Northern Circuit – Cathedral Range State Park – 12.7 kms

It is cool, but not as cold as predicted. My BOM app says 3 degrees with a feels like of -1.7C.  After all those sub-zero 5am starts each week over winter to attend the gym, it doesn’t feel bad at all. I mix up my protein powder drink and down a banana. I note a young woman camped over yonder has packed up and looks about to set out on the track. She heads in the direction I want to go, so I hang around for another 30 minutes to give her a head start.

Then I head up the same track I did yesterday to gain the main ridge. I’m doing the Northern Circuit backwards from how it is described in all of the park literature. I want to get the big climb to the ridge out of the way first thing, then get across the difficult bits along the ridge top early – before it gets hot and before the wind picks up.  Then I can do the long downhill on trail and the easy 3kms along the river back to camp at the end of the day. 

And so we head off for the hike and go down and up all the steps and steep bits and top out on the ridge, as we did yesterday.

The next 5 kms is not really hiking – it’s just all rock-hopping and placement of each and every footstep as you walk on top of, or along, the upturned sedimentary rocks. 

This track will be a favourite for you if you love being off-balance for an entire 5 kms of walking and love hopping from rock to rock on top of an exposed ridge. This hike is for you if you like being poked, spiked and occasionally impaled by all of the spiky, spiny native plants that are overgrowing the track. This track is for you if you like not knowing exactly where your feet are located in very snakey terrain. This track is for you if you are fit and nimble and can float from rock to rock like you are on an American Ninja Warrior course.

For the rest of us, it’s a pretty slow slog, with limbs contorted in different directions as you try to balance on upturned rocks and move forward at the same time. I’ve got long sleeves, long pants and snow gaiters on, and I still get a heap of scratches on my arms and get held up by plants grabbing at my shirt, leaving multiple picks and fuzzy bits on my shirt. There’s nothing like moving along and then being yanked backwards by a plant.

Yes, the plants are gorgeous. They are all in flower and they are beautiful. Yet their beauty is just a smokescreen for their aggro spikiness. There is not a plant along here that isn’t ready to stab you as you brush past. Eventually, you just get used to being continually spiked as you go. 

Later on, I pass a young couple with not enough water going the opposite direction. They don’t have much gear, and the young woman is wearing very short shorts and a sleeveless shirt… I pass them about 3 kms before they are going to get to the overgrown bushy ridge. I wonder how she is going to go with all those scratchy pants with that clothing choice! (Even though it was a circuit hike, I never passed them going the other way again, so maybe she bailed after 200 metres of blood draw.) 

The good thing for me is that doing the circuit backwards means that, as I traverse the ridgetop, the slanted rocks are off to my left when I’m not hiking along the top of them. This means I can lean into the rocks with my left arm outstretched in a way that my right arm would not like to do. So that is a bonus I had not expected. 

We enjoy the views and the tough hike. For that 6 kms along the ridgetop, you are contstantly going up or down and climbing on the rocks or alongside them. It would not be fun when hot or windy. 

Finally, we start heading down. I am very glad for the hiking poles to assist in taking some of my weight as the trail just drops right down without any switchbacks or steps. Sometimes, the drop from a rock or root is so big that I just sit down on it, dangle my feet down until I find some purchase and then let gravity take hold while I hold the poles in one hand. 

It is odd that there is so little trail maintenance. I see about 4 groups of people mid-week, in spring, outside of school holidays, and the track shows that this area gets a lot of use. There are two large teenage school groups each day as well. I couldn’t imagine being here during school holidays! It’s close enough to Melbourne to be a day trip, so it’s obviously a well-used park. 

The track is narrow but finally widens a bit as we descend an adjoining ridge. Hallelujah when we get to a long series of switchbacks that have a smooth track, and we don’t have to constantly step over and around rocks. 

It is short-lived, and soon we are back to a steep, eroded downhill grade with lots of big rocks and roots to climb down.  Yep, we are glad to have the poles for those long, continuous downhill stretches. 

The amazing thing, however, is how much better my body is now than it used to be prior to the mozzie virus. I can go back and look at journals where I talk about how much my fingers hurt when I’m packing up tent poles on a cold morning. I talk about using my inhaler before climbs. 

But, since I worked with the functional nutritionist to clean up my gut, all that arthritic finger pain has gone. My fingers don’t hurt anymore. And my knees don’t hurt nearly as bad as they would have back in the day for a similar length and grade of downhill. It’s just crazy. And my hayfever and asthma don’t give me much trouble at all these days. I don’t even carry an inhaler with me anymore. 

The nutritionist told me that would happen. I was skeptical. But damn, she was so right! To go from moderate asthma to pretty much none, to go from annoying hay fever nearly year-round, to pretty much nothing.  Yeah, I’m almost glad I got that mozzie virus. My body is better now than it was 10 years ago, and I’m sure I’ve just saved myself from some shitty years of chronic disease when I’m older, too.

It’s enough to send you skipping down the trail.  I don’t, lest I trip and reinjure my slowly healing shoulder, but I am in awe all the time about how good your body can be given the chance. 

I stop for lunch in the other walk-in campground. I should have stayed in this one. It’s much nicer and flatter, and less used, since you have to park your car 100 metres away. I just booked the other campground because it seemed more convenient as a starting point for the trails. I probably will never return here, but if I did, I’d stay at the Ned’s Gully campground and then just drive to the other trailheads. 

The last few kilometres are an easy meander through the floodplain back to our campsite. The last bits climb out of the floodplain and through an ugly section of harvested pines. You do get good views back to the ridge you’ve hiked along all day, however. 

It’s been a successful hike. I rode by here in 2017 and was impressed by the steep cliffs you see from the highway. Yet, it wouldn’t be an easy place to visit on the bike since you’d have to leave your bike at a trailhead unattended for long periods. So it’s good to have a bit of off-bike time to do some of these hikes that would not be as easy on a bike tour. 

Mt Torbreck – 1516 metres elevation – 7.8 kms

Today we are off to see a supervolcano!  Yes, another one. The La Garita volcano we visited in America was much larger, but its eruptions were 25-30 million years ago. The volcano we are visiting today was active around 365-374 million years ago. It was active at a similar time as Mt Wombat and the Strathbogies not far to the north and the adjoining Acheron caldera.

This caldera, the Cerberean, was about 27 X 21 kilometres in size and its super-eruption is thought to have been similar in size to the Mt Pinatubo eruption in 1991. The mountain we are climbing today would have been along the interal ring dyke on the eastern margin. 

We first have to drive to the edge of Eildon and then head up the Eildon-Jamieson Road – one we’ve ridden twice. It’s a fantastic ride – but you certainly lose a lot of the view all around when you are in the confines of the car.

Next, we turn off on the dirt Barnawell Plains Road. It’s in good shape, and there are only a few downed trees to drive around on the very edge of the drop-off. There are a few bits that feature really soft gravel, but it is all easy in a 2WD today. This road ascends into the old caldera, though the surface features do not give that away.

The road gets us up to 1050  metres, where we stop and park next to the seasonal closure gate. Now, had the seasonal gate been open, you can lop off 1.7 kms of road walking each way. However, there are fewer people when the gate is closed, so pick your poison. 

One of the radial faults of the caldera runs right along this road, and I stand there in the middle having a look around and trying to put the map figures I’ve seen in a journal article into place in the real topography.

It’s quite cool as we crunch up the road. A lot of it is that big railroad ballast type rock, so it wouldn’t be tons of fun to ride. But, most of it seems like it would be ride-able, the grade only too steep to ride in a few places. 

The road takes us up through previously logged forest – the trees are all the same age. It looks like this was last logged maybe 30 years ago. Had native forest logging not been stopped, I’m sure all of it would be on the chopping block for pulp wood soon.

The road takes us up to a saddle where there are shady acacias, an old picnic table, and spots to park and camp in summer. The road becomes 4WD here where it drops steeply down into the Snobs Creek Valley. 

The track starts pretty steep as it heads through an old logging coupe. Then the track gets very steep as it follows an old logging road cut into the side of the mountain. There are coupes on both sides of the trail, and a couple of them do not appear to have any regeneration. These were clear cuts with just a couple token older trees left standing. Based on the few trees that have re-seeded, these coupes are more recent – the past 10 or so years. 

We work our way up the steep trail, clambering over downed trees, climbing steep sections of rock and ungracefully crawling over bouncy branches from a fallen tree that makes me wonder whether it’s easier to go over or under. 

The sun gives way to cloud that sweeps upslope in a dense fog. This then gives way to sun, and then more fog as we are high enough to be in the clouds. We get views down into the Snobs Creek valley, and it is a very sad sight. They have logged the bejesus out of this area, and the valley below is just one clear cut after another, separated only by a line of eucalypts between each coupe. This valley, and the Rubicon next to it, were some of the prime examples used in lawsuits that showed the state corporation was undertaking illegal logging activities. It really is quite a sad sight down below.

Eventually we make it through the logging, through the woolly butt trees and up into the snowgums. This is a truly unique Australian ecosystem that is perilously under threat from climate change. The snow gums have smooth bark and grow into all sorts of contorted shapes in the subalpine zone. 

As we climb to a saddle, and then backtrack along the top of a ridge, the clouds get thicker and we walk through a damp fog. The snow gums are big up here. They grow in and around the big boulders that lump along the ridge. The snow gums arch in impossible angles with lichen-covered limbs all askew like long hair in the wind. 

The trail weaves through the boulders and then deposits us at a big rock cairn. 

In the past, you would have had 360 degree views from up here, as the trees had once been cut down. However, this area burnt in the 2009 fires, and the regrowth is prolific. You can’t even see the trig point, as the snow gums have sprouted up all around. 

So there are only views to east-ish directions. But right now, there is no view at all. The clouds are moving quickly over the summit, but there’s a bunch of them bunched up at these high elevations as we get to the top. 

I hang out. The guys and I have a snack, and once that clump of clouds moves on, we climb to the top of the rock cairn and gaze out over the rows and rows of ridges into the distance. We think about the caldera and where it would have been, and we try to figure out where we’ve ridden previously down in that maze of mountains below. 

Then the clouds come back. They come scudding over the saddle below and start to drop, then the wind in the next valley pushes the clouds back up. The clouds dance and dive and dip and lift. It is mesmerising and meditative to sit up there and watch those clouds move at speed overhead and over the saddle below. 

I may not have gotten great long-distance views today, but the cloud show is probably the best I’ve ever seen. I sit up there for a full 45 minutes just watching them fly over and bunch up in the distance. 

Eventually we head back down and are again thankful for the hiking poles on such a steep trail. I’m not sure we go any faster down than we did up! I have really good cardio fitness at the moment, so I can hike uphill quite quickly. So it’s not faster going down when I’m trying to gauge my steps and use the poles to help take the weight off my knees. 

On our drive back down the dirt road, an old ute with an old man in it (he is 80 it turns out), stops beside me. We have a nice long chat. He’s an old dude who lives alone, so he’s ready for some human connection and a loong chat. He owns about 100 acres nearby, has about 30 cows and 30 sheep, a menagerie of other animals, and he is out looking for firewood. 

He’s an ex-Qantas pilot and so doesn’t mind using computers. In fact, he writes letters all the time to the Council about various issues. He thinks they should leave the downed trees by the side of the road, instead of pushing them off, so that the oldies like him can cut them up for firewood. His property is worth $5 million but his pension is low, so he can’t afford firewood otherwise. 

So we have a nice chat (he seems oblivious that you can hike to the top of Mt Torbreck), and my nice, bogan 2004 Ford completely hides the fact I’m a greenie. The old guy goes on about various environmental things, but does qualify several times that he is not a greenie, as he seems concerned I might look down on him for that. Haha!

We head on into town. Eildon became a town when they were building Sugarloaf Dam, and then later when they expanded the dam and put in hydro-electric capabilities. So it’s a planned town with much of its housing stock still the 1950s cottages built for the workers. The town is now the base for tourists as they come up to camp, fish, 4WD and enjoy Lake Eildon. It’s a big lake – it holds as much water as six Sydney Harbours. It’s also the only lake in Victoria that allows houseboats, so that is a big drawcard. There are lots of caravan parks around, too. 

The town itself is pretty sad, though. The pub and adjoining motel are closed (it was in a sad state when I was here on the bike in 2017) and the only evening meal options are a takeaway shop and a restaurant that gets terrible reviews. On a weekday afternoon, the town is pretty dead. I don’t know why it’s not more vibrant. It seems like it could be a southern “Bright”… but it is most definitely not. 

I find a nice, sunny spot along the pondage where I can spread out my tent (I threw it in the boot wet this morning) to dry while I cook up lunch. I find a picnic table that is all metal – not so great in summer, but it’s not hot today. The metal is a bit safer for my stove – I don’t worry about burning anything.

It is nice to not have to worry about how much fuel I’m using. I don’t have to conserve it for the next however many days until resupply!  And I have fresh veg to go in.  Ahhhh, all these comforts of car-based adventure. So I make up some red lentils and rice – like red beans and rice only with red lentils. With the rice and lentils, I’ve got tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, red capsicum and kangaroo sausage in there with some beef stock and a creole seasoning mix. Yum!

The guys then get a nice float in the shade with views of the mountain we climbed this morning in the background. What a nice way to finish the day!

After our late lunch, I drive up to the dam, simply because the couple times before that I have been here, I’ve been on the bike and not bothered. You can actually still drive across the dam wall here. I pull off in one parking area, climb a gazillion steps to a pavilion… that has absolutely no view of the dam waters, the dam wall or the spillway. Why they built this with such prominence but no views….? 

There’s a motorbike guy sitting up there in the shade talking on the phone. He says hello once finished and asks where I’ve come from. He is from Melbourne and just out for a ride because he was bored. We have a chat about the area, and he can’t believe I’ve ridden around Lake Eildon on the bike and ridden the Eildon-Jamieson Road a couple times. He raises his eyebrows when I describe the Big River ride I did.  He says, “well, gosh, you like to suffer, don’t you.”

I tell him I wouldn’t mind riding a motorbike, but I feel like I’m too old. I think it’s something you need to learn when you are young, so by the time you get older and your reflexes aren’t as quick, you already have the feel for the road and how a motorbike responds. He assures me that I am definitely not too old, and that having all the pushbike experience would directly translate. He tells me I should get a scooter – apparently all the motorbike guys get them for around town and then ride them going flat out at 80kph. 

When he finds out I’m from NSW, he says Victoria is so far behind the other states. I tell him that living on the state border, we see the best and worst of each state, and that VIC is better with some things and NSW is better at others. I say, “Yeah, but you guys are in a pretty tough spot with your budget. All that money spent on covid has really put VIC in the hole.” He agrees with this and then goes on about all the terrible things “Dictator Dan” has done – VIC’s previous Premier that led the state through the covid crisis. He then says we had the best Premier ever, Dominic Perrotet, and he was only voted out because he was a Liberal. 

I laugh inside. Good ol’ Dom didn’t really do much and wasn’t around for long. He slid into office when his predecessor quit before she was removed due to corruption charges. The Liberals were voted out in the last election because they’d been in power for 12 years, had become quite corrupt, and were refusing to give teachers, nurses, police and firefighters a decent raise after covid (which the opposing party that got elected did promise – and did deliver). 

It is good though. I love that my conversation, appearance and whatever else, does not make me out as the very left-leaning greenie that I am. I love that these very conservative folks talk to me like I’m one of them – just assuming that, because I’m from a regional area, and driving a bogan car, that I think Dan Andrews was bad and the Liberals (which in Oz are NOT liberal) the pick of the political bunch. 

My social engagements complete for the day, I go check into the motel. I want to be able to get a shower tonight before I meet a friend for coffee in Wangaratta on the way home tomorrow. After three days of steep and sweaty uphill hiking, I STINK!! The caravan parks here charge $50 for an unpowered site which is beyond ridiculous. So I’m happy to pay $100 for the motel instead. 

Eildon will always be etched in my memory as the place I fell off the cliff. Not literally. In 2017, I was ignoring all the symptoms from the mozzie virus, and continued to do really hard rides. I was really tired all the time. My legs always hurt. My brain felt a bit fuzzy and my digestion was off. But I kept riding. 

And then we did the difficult 3-day Big River ride. And that was it. My body had no more left. What I thought was a really big bonk on the way back to town on that ride was actually the beginning of my 4.5 years of sickness. That death ride was when the post-viral fatigue syndrome took me down and could no longer be ignored. 

I will always remember that ride. My body was struggling along over the previous few months, and then it just gave up on me. And it took me 4.5 years to get it back. 

I do not lie or exaggerate when I tell you that I really do wake up every single day grateful to feel good and to have energy. And I often thank my lucky stars that all of that crap led to even better health than I had before the virus. Oh yes, I will always have to be careful not to overdo things. That shit can always come back. But I know how to eat, what not to eat, and what my body is saying in a way I never knew before. 

So my original plan was to come back to Oz and immediately head off on the bike for Lake Mungo. It’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit, but it’s way the heck out there on the edge of the Outback, and it’s a pretty limited period of the year when it is comfortable to do on the bike (too hot and too many flies most of the year). Then, if we got the grant, I’d return from that ride for the contract. Then, if we didn’t get the grant, I’d just keep riding, and the Lake Mungo ride would get me bike-fit for the mountains again.

Well, the torn shoulder tendons nixxed the Lake Mungo ride, but I have gotten to do several hikes that have been on my list for a long time. I always tend to defer to riding rather than  taking a hike. So it’s been nice to be forced to work on my hiking list. The past few days have been fun – what other hikes can we accomplish before we get tied to a desk and computer for another 12 months again?