Homebush Bay Perambulations I: A Walk through ‘Toxicity’ … Munitions Dumps and Toxic Mounds

Posted on April 9, 2016January 4, 2024 by funambulator@live.com

Bushwalking, Environmental, Heritage & Conservation, Social History

The north-western part of Homebush Bay in Sydney’s west was once a backwater of swampy industrial and military dumping grounds and wastelands. The rubbish dumps are still there but no longer visible and the entire surface area of the Bay now boasts a diverse range of interesting walks for the enthusiastic pedestrian. The network of walkways allow you to commence a walk in Homebush Bay* from various points of the compass … we shall start with a walk from the north-west commencing at Silverwater Bridge and throw in some digressions and let’s see what we can unearth.

The Rivercat on route to Sydney Olympic Park

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As you set off by foot on the south bank along the pathway you can see across the River the predominantly low-level housing of Ermington and Melrose Park. There is not much river traffic around this part of the waterway but expect to see the green-and-white Rivercat glide by at regular intervals.

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The first item of historic interest we encounter is the former Royal Australian Navy site, Newington Armory. There is a modern (‘Armory’) cafe, an older shop that also sells coffee and some play facilities here, near to the naval depot entrance. The entrance area is much as it was when the Navy abandoned the site in 1999 – still standing is an 1897 brick gatehouse (also known as “the cooperage”), with a rail track leading down from the gate to where the wharf used to be. Two old, grey-toned cranes (circa 1960s) stand fixed in time on the edge of the river.

The Sydney Olympic Park Authority describes the Armory site as it exists today as “compris(ing) a range of historically significant natural and cultural features including former army and navy ammunition storehouses, workshops, offices, small gauge railway and other infrastructure associated with the operation of a naval armament depot”¹. One hundred years ago (1916) it was a military powder magazine and five years after that a munitions store for the navy.

When the navy moved out there were skiploads of old armaments and other dangerous pollutants lying around the depot, so the department simply buried them and fenced off a large section of the site from the public. Other sections of the former naval property still have limited access for commercial activities on the weekend only (eg, rides on a historic electric locomotive which had been used for moving armaments around the ordnance depot). Blaxland Riverside Park nearby has flying fox rides and tunnel slides. Not far from here is the new Newington housing estate.

Continuing down the waterfront path, you come to a side path next to a high electricity tower. This bush-lined path (named in honour of paralympian Louise Sauvage) can be either a digression to take in the view from the second highest point in the Bay (after the Treillage), or an another route to the Sydney Olympic Precinct (railway station) via the lush Narawang Wetland and Haslams Creek.

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There’s a steep, linear walk up a very large conical-shaped earth mound full of dangerous chemicals and other toxins² buried under several layers of top and middle soil … atop this geographical marker (Bay Marker) is the best view around here – a 360-degree panorama incorporating the river, the uniformed high-rise of Rhodes and Liberty Grove and the numerous Olympia stadia. Steeply descending the mound trail to the bottom you immediately ascend again, this second hilltop not as steep as the mound but with a plateau at the top, bears the name ascribed to it by the local, Wan-gal clan, Woo-la-ra (= lookout).

From the high ground of Woo-la-ra you have a choice (several choices in fact): you can take the path down to Hill Road where you can walk along the forest trail parallel to Hill Road**. The Sydney Olympic Park Wharf is about one kilometre away, where you can catch the ferry back to Circular Quay or west to Parramatta.

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We decide to continue the path for a further 2.5km through the Millennium Parklands down to Haslams Creek. Here on the south-eastern shore of the Creek there is another high mound known as Kronos Hill, and also full of hidden toxic surprises³. You can follow a staggered, concentric trail up to the summit and be rewarded with sweeping 360-degree views of the Olympic Precinct (Allphones Arena and ANZ Stadium are both in the immediate foreground). From atop Kronos Hill it is only about half-an-hour walk’s back to the Olympic train station.

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* “Homebush Bay” strictly historically speaking refers to the inlet, the body of water, off Parramatta River. The area that is now generally thought of as Homebush Bay (including Wentworth Point and the Sydney Olympic Park) was described in the early part of the 20th century as being part of “Lidcombe North”. The name “Homebush” itself derives from D’Arcy Wentworth who was granted a large land grant in the area in 1810, literally “his home in the bush”. ‘Homebush out to make a point’, Daily Telegraph, (Sydney), 04 January 2009, www.dailytelegraph.com.au

** Optional diversion: you might consider a side trip from the corner of Bennelong and Hill. From the intersection its about 400 metres to the Olympic Archery Field … catch a look at a bunch of would-be “Robin Hoods” in “bow and quiver” action (not a skerrick of Lincoln green in sight though, I’m afraid!).

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¹ ‘Armory History: The Military Magazine’, (Sydney Olympic Park Authority), www.sopa.nsw.gov.au. During WWII the US Navy Pacific arm had its own ammo depot at the Armory, ‘Newington Armory’ (Wikipedia), http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newington-Armory

² these include dioxins (DDT, pesticides and herbicides), hydrocarbons, lead, heavy metals, asbestos, benzenes and phenols, Sharon Beder, ‘… And what the tourists will not see’, Sunday Age, 18 June 2000

³ Haslams Creek is heavily polluted with toxins (especially dioxins) as are all of the waterways and wetlands around Homebush Bay. Largely this is a direct result of chemical pollution by the Union Carbide/Timbrol Rhodes Plant between 1949 and 1976. The giant chemicals manufacturer poured the waste by-products of dioxins as well as other toxic landfill along the shoreline of the Bay. This practice (unbelievably) was sanctioned by the Maritime Services Board on the grounds that it “reclaimed stinking wetlands for a useful industrial purpose”. Consequently the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1994 ranked Homebush Bay as one of the five worst dioxin hotspots in the world, ‘A race against toxins’, The Irish Times, 19 August 2000.

Walkers’ World: Rambling Round a 19th Century Million Pound Foreshore Estate

Posted on February 9, 2016November 4, 2023 by funambulator@live.com

Built Environment, Bushwalking, Heritage & Conservation, Social History

Whichever way you look at it, its one absolute corker of a good walk … a leisurely 8km or so saunter from Rhodes Station around the foreshore to the former estate of the fabulously rich Walkers of Concord. Whether it’s your step-counting, fitness-conscious walker, your dedicated dog-walker or your insouciant, wandering flaneur, the Concord shoreline walk is a varied and interesting stroll through rustic, undulating fields and flat, serene bayside paths bordered by mangroves and what remains of a eucalyptus forest. A walk through the erstwhile Walker estate takes you past historic reminders of grand Victorian/Edwardian homes and World War repatriation hospitals and convalescence facilities.

href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/image4.jpg”> Rhodes house[/

As we leave the western side of the railway station, we immediately have our first encounter with one of the local historical personages. Walker Street (next to the rail line) is named after Thomas Walker, the first of two Thomas Walkers to leave a weighty footprint on the area of Concord/Rhodes. This first Thomas Walker, an officer in charge of government stores in the early colony, purchased land at Uhrs Point, a locale which eventually became the suburb of Rhodes, named after the house Walker had built for himself.

Rhodes – a background of industrial polluters of the environment and the suburb’s homogeneous, characterless domestic makeover
Heading north along Walker Street, we pass the sites previously occupied by many commercial and industrial enterprises including the large paint manufacturer Berger’s and the multinational giant Union Carbide’s Chemicals plant…notorious first for being the site of the US company’s manufacture of devastating “Agent Orange” (the US military’s aerial terrorist weapon of choice during the Vietnam War) and then as an environmental dumper, for its reprehensible practice of discharging the dioxins that make the lethal herbicide into the Parramatta River. In their place we see the shape of the post-industrial landscape that dominates Rhodes today – masses and masses of homogeneous semi-high rise blocks of modern apartments and large clumps of new ones still going up. At the end of Walker Street there is a nice little park touching the river (Point Park) where members of the ubiquitous local Asian community perform their daily Tai chi exercises.

Walking under the railway line and passing some light industry and the big IKEA warehouse, we loop around Uhrs Point below the 1935 Ryde Bridge near the sea scouts hall and turn south in the direction of Concord. After a stretch of nondescript street we reach Brays Bay Reserve, named after the first land-owner in Rhodes, Alfred Bray, who built the now long demolished ‘Braygrove’ in ca 1800 (the pioneering Brays owned property in Rhodes from 1794 to 1909).

In the Bray Reserve we walk onto a vacant concrete pier on the edge of the river, no indication that it once housed a Philips Industries site when they were in the bike manufacturing business. On the other side of the square there is a plaque with some rusty old sides of a ship signifying the former presence of Tulloch’s Iron Works in Rhodes (during WWII it functioned as ‘Commonwealth Shipyard # 4’). The remnants of a railed track with ship names engraved on the ground … female names, all curiously enough starting with the letter ‘E’.

Kokoda commemorative walk:
The next section of the trail, densely cordoned on one side by thick mangroves, comprises the 1990s constructed Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway. The walkway is set in a rainforest tropics-themed garden with Kokoda Campaign audio ‘stations’ named after various battles and campaigns of the New Guinea conflict (Efogi, Iorabaiwa, Myola, etc) positioned at different points. There is also a memorial with two high, semi-circular walls surrounded by a rose garden in the rainforest, and a small kiosk-style cafe at the mid-way point of the track. When the path reaches the open side gate to Concord General Hospital, the Kokoda Walkway ends and we take the path deviating to the left.

The path (usually muddy here) skirts round the back of the Concord Repatriation Hospital, which itself continues the WWII theme. It was built in 1940 as the 113th Australian Army General Hospital, taking in wounded and convalescing servicemen from the War. The ground on which the hospital dominated by the huge “Multi Building” stands passed to the Crown after the death of Dame Eadith Walker, daughter of the second Thomas Walker associated with the area. This Thomas Walker was a Scottish migrant in the 19th century who made it (very) big from property and stock investment and finance in Australia (in his later years he was president of the Bank of NSW). At the time of his death his personal worth was estimated at up to £2,000,000, a staggering amount for 1886!

🔺 Walker Convalescent Hospital

Walker estate and convalescent hospital:
This is a very tranquil part of Concord, with only the occasional dog-walker or jogger to be seen on the dirt track. As we come round the bend in the path, dense bamboo woods on our left, we get our first glimpse of the first convalescent hospital on the peninsula (much, much smaller than the Concord Repat). Walker left £100,000 for the construction of what became the Thomas Walker Memorial Convalescent Hospital, designed and built by famous Australian architect John Sulman in the early 1890s after the injection of a further £50,000 from Eadith and her aunt and other relatives for the project’s completion. The hospital was an amazingly extensive complex in its day and the central core of the hospital remains, albeit a lot of the surrounding adjunct buildings have not survived.

At its height the adjoining structures included an admin block, separate dining rooms and pavilions for men and women, concert hall and servants’ quarters, with a tennis court for convalescing patients. Staying on the foreshore path we reach the distinctive Dutch bell tower (above) on the water, from where a long stepped pathway leads impressively up to the hospital entrance. In the time it was a working hospital the bell tower was the landing-point for ferries conveying patients from Circular Quay, and it also served in a secondary function as a smoking room – for male patients only!

Walker’s convalescent hospital admitted 683 patients in its first year of operation and over the following 80 years took in thousands free of charge in accordance with Walker’s bequest. During WWII it was used to house the 3rd Australian Women’s Hospital. By the 1970s however it was no longer viable as a free convalescent hospital and in 1979 it began functioning as the Rivendell Adolescent Unit for the rehabilitation of emotionally disturbed youth, and it is still operating as such today.

Following the path further south we pass coastal bush and mangroves and come to a series of stairs (down and then up again) which are behind the Mental Health Unit of Concord Hospital – a newish facility relocated from Callan Park/Rozelle in 2008. The path curves around the peninsula into Yaralla Bay and the newer buildings (mental health and drug health) give way to a series of old, very dilapidated looking buildings comprising the hospital’s engineering and works divisions.

We walk toward a clear, grassy area and take a sharp left out of the hospital grounds, near the helipad, at its south-western end where the mangroves are at their most dense. This leads into desolate bush and scrubland alongside the bay. Pretty soon the path becomes fairly marshy and prone to be boggy after rain (avoid if waterlogged during a walk by veering to the right over the higher ground of the fields which has better run-off). This field is one of a series of large, empty and fenced off paddocks in this part of the former Walker Estate. What looks like a bare and fallow piece of land has become a hotly contested bit of Canada Bay.

(Source: New Ltd)

Agistment wars:
The paddocks had been used for decades by local horse-owners for the agistment of their steeds. The state government held an inquiry in 2012/2013 which found that the tenant in charge had mismanaged the site (fences not properly maintained leading to some horses escaping into the hospital helipad and adjoining streets, and other conditions of the agistment licence not fulfilled by the licensee). The government health authority then did a late night deal with the Mounted Unit of the NSW Police giving them the green light to move their 18 service horses from the city (Surry Hills) to the freshly vacated paddocks of Yaralla Estate. Then the government suddenly backflipped on its decision to move the police horses to Yaralla (prompting an ICAC inquiry into the whole matter of the paddocks’ usage). However it still went ahead with the revoking of the tenant’s lease and the recreational horses were turfed off the estate, causing a vociferous outcry from the aggrieved horse owners. Since then there have been signals from the government of an intention to turn the land into 18ha of parklands for future public use. However the agistment paddocks remain idle and unoccupied, giving further cause for protest from the ejected horse lovers at the current impasse. So far, a lose-lose situation!

Continuing the path south through the second Walker peninsula we come to the grand villa, Yaralla House, set up on raised land 150 metres from the shoreline. Around it are the various auxiliary buildings of the Yaralla Estate. The Walker Estate was acquired by the millionaire banker in piecemeal fashion in the 1840s-1850s from the beneficiaries of Isaac Nichols, convict-cum-colonial postmaster and the original crown landowner in Concord. Yaralla House itself is an architecturally significant, asymmetrical Victorian Italianate mansion, the original alabaster white villa was built by colonial architect Edmund Blacket (1850s-60s) with John Sulman adding extensions to it in the 1890s.

Squash courts built 1920 for future Edward VIII but apparently not used by him on his visit (Source: www.slhd.nsw.gov.au)

Self-contained ‘Walker World’:
After Eadith Walker inherited the Yaralla Estate from her father she built the built up the property holdings piece-by-piece, adding a swimming pool, squash and tennis courts, croquet lawn, stables, coach-house, guest houses and other auxiliary buildings. The squash court was installed specifically for the use of the then Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) on his visit. However the Royal personage (and later fan-boy of the German reichsführer) declined to play on it because of its concrete floor (his cousin and travel companion Louis (Lord) Mountbatten “had a hit up” instead!).

Yaralla also had its own dairy farm (supplying milk to the Walkers’ hospital and to other local hospitals), piggery, fowl enclosures, bakery, fire brigade and powerhouse (Yaralla was the first building in Concord to have electricity!) A good chunk of the 40ha-plus grounds were used as a golf course – some of its members later established the Royal Sydney Golf Club in North Bondi. The rest broke away from the Sydney Club and formed the Concord Golf Course (Club) on land, then known as “Walker’s Bush”, that had been part of the Walkers’ holdings.

Eadith lived alone at Yaralla – in the sense that she never married, however in a very real sense she was far from alone, even after her companion/adopted sister Anne left to marry the architect Sulman. Dame Eadith maintained a huge retinue of some 200 servants, maids, grooms, cooks, gardeners, engineers and other live-in staff. In addition, twin cousins of the family from Tenterfield, northern NSW, Egmont and George (Walker), lived there for many years (each having a room named after him!)

Rockery from Italy:
Dame Eadith spared little expense on the beautification of her estate. Stonemasons were imported from Italy to build an sculptured Italianate terrace and a grotto. The grotto is a series of sculpted rockery caves interspersed with exotic flora, ferns, palms and especially succulents, lying at the foot of the bluff on which the former Walker home sits. The area between the grotto and the shoreline once contained the Walkers’ swimming pool complete with its own pumping station. There is also a decorative sunken garden and the evocative Four Winds Fountain located near the house.

(Source: www.slhd.nsw.gov.au)

At one period around WWI Eadith was a regular holder of lavish parties and charitable fetes and balls at Yaralla (Walker received her DBE for charitable activities). For the socially advanced, “old money” set, it was the place to be seen! Periodically she entertained royalty … both the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) and the Duke of Gloucester (the future George VI) stayed at the Yaralla Estate. Lesser luminaries, including governor-generals and premiers, also stayed at the Estate. In one celebrated incident aviator Ross Smith landed on the front lawn in a bi-plane in 1920 and had cucumber sandwiches on the lawn with the good Dame Commander. From her art and artifacts collections garnered from frequent overseas’ trips she brought back many Indian treasures to incorporate into a special showcase Indian room at Yaralla. After visiting Scandinavia she had a Norwegian cottage shipped out and reassembled on the Concord estate.

During the Great War the patriotic Eadith gave over Yaralla’s grounds to the army to be used as a ‘tent’ hospital. Yaralla House (less well-known by the name Eadith Walker Convalescent Hospital) fell into the Crown’s hands after her death sans heirs in 1937. It eventually came under the trusteeship of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (the RPA) and then that of the Sydney Local Health District (SLHD). RPA now uses the former villa (and other on-site cottages) as a residential care facility to house HIV and dementia outpatients.

After Dame Eadith died, the contents of the Yaralla properties were auctioned in 1938 by auctioneers Lawson’s and de Groot. Held over eight days, it was the biggest auction held in Australia to that time. Some of the Yaralla items sold are now in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

Fortunately for the vast Estate, there has been a lot of conservation and restoration work carried out at Yaralla in recent years – a combined effort by the City of Canada Bay Heritage Society, the Council itself, and the SLHD. We resume the walk, past the grotto, where the path slopes gently down towards a dense patch of very tall and wild bamboo on the water side with a small child care centre on the right. If you look west up the road that leads away from the centre, you will see a row of planted trees which guards an elaborate rose garden created by Eadith.

In the next section of the walk the narrowing path is encroached upon by overhanging branches in what is a pleasant little, untamed stretch of bush. Shortly we come to a metal fence signifying the boundary where the Yaralla Estate once ended, it has a gate that is no longer locked. Past the gate is a large, well-kept park which looks out on to Majors Bay. A small but dense turpentine-ironbark forest leads to the right in the direction of Nullawarra Road which is flanked by Arthur Walker Reserve (coincidentally named after an apparently unrelated ‘Walker’!).

The expansive park curves around Majors Bay with a continuous trail of dense mangroves on the foreshore and sporting fields on the right. The concrete pathway ends, abruptly and surprisingly, at the back fence of someone’s house. Surprising because, with just a little imaginative urban planning and some funding, a bracket-shaped boardwalk could have extended the foreshore path around the houses to connect with close-by Shadrock Shaw Reserve (much in the manner achieved with sections of Salt Pan Creek and other coastal walkways).

The conclusion of a wonderful walk full of interesting history and natural beauty and charm … a tranquil corridor of nature with an air of unhurried ambience. From the Majors Bay Reserve end-point you can choose between walking on through the Mortlake and Breakfast Point streets to the ferry at Cabarita, or heading west, cutting across Concord Road to the nearest train station at Concord West.

Footnote: Yaralla tradesman’s entrance
The entrance to Yaralla is the main (wrought iron) gate and the Hyacinth (Gatekeeper’s) Cottage at the junction of Nullawarra Rd and The Drive. In its heyday however, the Estate extended as far west as Concord Road (the original gate being where the Masonic hall is on Concord Road). Where privately owned red brick cottages and Californian bungalows are today, Dame Eadith constructed retirement cottages for her loyal staff to live in at the end of their working lives.

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Bibliography:
Sheena Coupe, Concord A Centenary History (1883-1983), Sydney 1983.
Jennifer MacCulloch, ‘Walker, Dame Eadith Campbell (1861-1937), Australian Dictionary of Biography, ANU, published in hardcover 1990
Patricia Skehan, ‘Yaralla estate’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2011, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/yaralla_estate, viewed 31 January 2016
Graham Spindler, Uncovering Sydney: Walks into Sydney’s Unexpected and Endangered Places, Sydney 1991
‘Rivendell School’, http://www.rivendell-s.schools.nsw.edu.au/
‘Thomas Walker Convalescent Hospital (Rivendell)’, City of Canada Bay Heritage Society, www.concordheritage.asn.au
Yaralla Estate, Dame Eadith Walker Estate Management Plan, 2014-16, (draft), www.edas.canadabay.nsw.gov.au

Medlow Majestic in the Wilderness: Transforming a White Elephant into a White Palace?

Posted on April 30, 2015January 10, 2023 by E Curb Nottus

Built Environment, Bushwalking, Commerce & Business, Social History, Travel

The Hydro Majestic Hotel stands on the upper slopes of the Megalong Valley in the Blue Mountains, about 116 kilometres west of the Sydney CBD. Last December it re-opened for business six years after it’s resale and interim closure in 2008. The new owners, the Escarpment Group (a consortium of Sydney developers headed by Huong Nguyen and George Saad), have an ambitious vision for the Medlow Bath hotel, including an extension to its facilities and services, and a major renovation of the once great Blue Mountains landmark to restore some of its past glory. About four years passed before construction work even commenced on the site. Initially the new owners had to undertake a big clean-up job of the vacated property as a very large amount of assorted clutter was left behind by the previous occupants [‘Saving a grand old beauty’s soul’, Peter Munro, Traveller, 7 January 2013, www.traveller.com.au].

The Hydro Majestic through the agency of a renovation that cost $30 million has been transformed—from its erstwhile state of dishevelment and disrepair—to again rise seemingly phoenix-like in 2015. The new exterior makeover resulted in the complex’s buildings being painted uniformly white, clearly the developers are hoping that the anticipated returns will repay the investment (all up a reported $40.5 million including the purchase price) so that the venture doesn’t end up a ‘white elephant in all senses!’

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The Majestic’s current incarnation however is only the latest of many manifestations and reinventions that the hotel has undergone over its long, colourful history. The Hydro Majestic’s genesis lies in the overseas travel experiences of retail baron Mark Foy around the turn of the twentieth century. Foy was co-owner with his brother Francis of the large Sydney department store, Mark Foy’s (named after his father Mark Foy Sr) in Oxford Street, Sydney, later relocated to Liverpool Street in a famous piazza building. The young entrepreneur’s experience of health spas on the Continent gave him the idea for starting a hydropathic therapy operation in Australia. In 1902 Foy purchased several large blocks of land in the Blue Mountains to re-create a similar spa resort to the highly-popular sanatoriums he had visited in Europe. The site chosen at Medlow Bath was supposedly located on natural mineral springs that incorporated the earlier Belgravia Hotel [John Low, ‘Palace in a Wilderness: Hydro Majestic Medlow Bath’, www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au].

Foy’s Blue Mountains ur-health resort
Upon completion in 1904 Foy opened his Medlow Bath hydropathic sanatorium (the first health resort in NSW) which he named the Hydro-Majestic. By this time whatever springs were present (if they ever existed) had dried up. Consequently Foy imported large quantities of mineral water from Germany for use in his establishment [www.hydromajestic.com.au (Wikipedia entry)]. He also introduced a German-manufactured generator to supply the Hotel and the surrounding township with electricity (purportedly four days before the city of Sydney achieved electricity!) [www.hydromajestic.com.au, ibid.].

A series of spa pools connected by springs to the hotel generator were constructed in the nearby bush for the use of guests. Foy advertised that the Hydro would provide cures for nervous, alimentary, respiratory and circulatory ailments. Foy from the establishment’s start was also intent on trying to broaden the Hydro’s appeal, advertising it as “the most enjoyable place to spend one’s holidays” [Elaine Kaldy, ‘Medlow 1883 and Now’ (1983), cited in ‘Mb002 : Hydro Majestic’, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au]. To coordinate the therapeutic programs Foy brought out a Dr Bauer from Switzerland to introduce guests to his “diets of weird and wonderful treatments” [www.hydromajestic.com.au].

Playboy business tycoon
Mark Foy, to all accounts, was not particularly hands-on in his business pursuits, leaving it to a host of managers and agents. The Hydro for instance was apparently leased to influential hotelier and parliamentarian James Joynton Smith in 1913 [‘K032 : Carrington Hotel’, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au]. Foy’s conspicuous affluence and delegation of tasks to others allowed him the leisure to pursue outdoor activities. The business baron also had a reputation of being something of a playboy-about-town in the ‘Great Gatsby’ mould, legendary for throwing lavish parties for his friends at the Hydro and at his other homes at Bellevue Hill and Bayview.

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The Hydro Majestic owner was a keen sportsman, yachtsman and motor-car enthusiast. He was such a car enthusiast that he would periodically have sales of bulk numbers of his vehicles on site at his Bellevue Hill property [“MARK FOY’S MOTORS” (Advertisement), Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 1910 – an adroit coupling of business with pleasure on his part; cited in Pittwater Online News, Issue 102 (17-23 March 2013), http://www.pittwateronlinenews.com/mark-foy-history.php]. Foy used his fleet of cars to ferry guests on trips from Medlow Bath to nearby Jenolan Caves. He also kept horses on the grounds for guests to explore Megalong Valley by horseback [Office of Heritage and Environment (Hydro Majestic), www.environment.nsw.gov.au].

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Network of bush walks and sustainable agriculture
Foy had a series of bush walk tracks built on the cliffs below the Hydro Majestic. The walking tracks provided spa guests with a physical outlet that would complement Dr Bauer’s therapeutic programs. Guests were encouraged to exercise in the fresh mountain air as part of their recovery. These tracks with local physical features with names like Tucker’s Lookout, Sentinel Pass and the Colosseum offer breath-taking cliff views of the Megalong Valley, and are still explored by bush walkers today.As well as the hotel site itself Mark Foy purchased a considerable amount of land in the Megalong Valley to grow food for the Majestic hotel dinner tables. Foy built a large rural holding at Megalong which he called the Valley Farm, on it was a racecourse, stables, diary farm and a piggery. The farm grew corn, turnips and oats [‘Mark Foy – Retail Tycoon and Megalong Valley Farm’, www.megalongcc.com.au]. The produce grown in the valley was transported up to the resort by a flying fox Foy had rigged up.

The business tycoon also maintained personal properties on the Medlow Bath complex, including a cottage in the Valley known as the Sheleagh Cottage. This property with its great views of the valley, now called “Mark Foy House”, is today listed as a mountains getaway available for rental. It is unclear how much time the constantly on-the-go Foy spent at Sheleagh, or for that matter at any of his Sydney properties, as the newspapers of that day regularly reported him as embarking with his family on yet another world or European tour [cited in Pittwater Online News, op.cit.]. I can easily imagine Foy’s name cropping up constantly in the Vice-Regal column that used to appear in the Sydney Morning Herald.

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Resort’s luminaries
At the height of its popularity, in the twenties, the Hydro-Majesty was THE fashionable venue to visit, “the place to be seen” by the denizens who grace Sydney’s social pages. Over the years it has had more than its fair share of VIP guests, such as Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whose novel The Lost World was inspired by the vast wilderness environment that the Hydro was set in. Other guests include Indian rajahs, Australia’s first Olympic swimming gold medal winner Freddie Lane, and the Commonwealth’s inaugural Prime Minister Edmund Barton, who died whilst staying at the resort in 1920. Boxer Tommy Burns set up a training camp at the hotel where he prepared to fight Jack Johnson for the World Heavyweight Championship in the most famous bout in Australia boxing history at Sydney Stadium in 1908. The entertainment and amusements provided by Mr Foy at the Hydro Majestic took various forms. In its heyday when it was a luxury tourist resort, balls and concerts were regular events. Singers such as the soprano queens Dames Nellie Melba and Clara Butt were hired to perform at these concerts. A curious feature was the cross-dressing costume parties of well-to-do guests in which the husband and wife swapped clothing with each other for the event [‘Saving a grand old beauty’s soul’, op.cit.].

An architectural mixed bag
Taken at its broad scope the Hydro-Majestic is an impressive if a bit discordant sight, a long line of arranged buildings, albeit positioned in a somewhat higgledy-piggledy fashion stretching for some 1.1 kilometres across the Megalong escarpment. The Hotel’s architecture is hybrid in character, with buildings being added in an ad hoc fashion over time and in a novel mixture of styles: Victorian, Edwardian, Belle Époque and a blend of Art Deco and Art Nouveau interior design.

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The Majestic’s most distinctive external feature is the Casino building with its imposing Chicago-manufactured dome (this ‘casino’ has been used as an entertainment hall or pavilion rather than as a gaming house). The changing fortunes of the Hydro Majestic as a whole over the decades was symbolised in the fate of the Casino itself: going from the scene for grand balls and concerts in the 1920s and 1930s to a repository for (how the mighty have fallen!) pinball machine entertainment in the 1980s!

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Resident artist with obsessive-compulsive tendencies
One of the most intriguing interior features of the Hydro Majestic is the so-called Cat’s Alley, a long corridor whose windows back in the day were draped with peacock feathers. Scone-and-cream afternoon tea visitors to the hotel would stroll down the corridor strewn with puff-pillowed lounge chairs and a set of bizarre panelled scenes, hunting scenes from different historical periods, the work of a Swiss artist called Arnold Zimmerman. Panel after panel comprised Prehistoric cavemen hunting wooly mammoths, Assyrian warriors slaughtering lions, British Raj mounted horsemen hunting tigers in India, Roman soldiers killing elephants, and so on and so on. The first time I ever visited the Hydro I marvelled somewhat bemused at Zimmerman’s paintings, finding them slightly disturbing in their obsession with the monumental struggle between man and beast, terrible but also engaging in a visceral way. Visitor access was blocked to the Alley for some years but it is pleasing to note that it is opened again after the refurbishment with additional seating.

The immediacy of a vast wilderness of National Park bushland has regularly posed a danger to the Hydro Majestic. In 1905 fire destroyed the Gallery building and in 1922 did the same to the original Belgravia wing. There have been several other close calls, the latest in 2002 when Medlow Bath’s “Gothic tourist pile”, as one article described it, narrowly avoided a spot fire blaze [Margaret Simons, ‘Majestic tourist icon survives ordeal by fire’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 December 2002].

The Hydro-Majestic over the course of its century-plus existence has undergone a number of transformations. What started off as a hydropathic spa pretty soon morphed into a luxury tourist retreat after 1909 (“Mr Foy’s Private Lodge”), only to revert more modestly to a family hotel for ordinary guests and day-trippers. In WWII the Hydro was converted into the 118th US General Hospital to care for convalescing American soldiers, some of which showed their “gratitude” by inflicting damage on the hotel’s decor during their stay. After the War the Hydro reverted to a hotel and guesthouse. By the 1980s the buildings had declined alarmingly despite receiving a heritage preservation order in 1984, business had dropped off and the very visible signs of wear and age eventually necessitated a revamping in the 1990s and again in the last few years.

In keeping with the hybrid nature of the hotel, parts of the new Hydro Majestic exude a distinctly oriental flavour. The Salon Du Thé features a Shanghai chic tea room and bar and both it and the Cat’s Alley reprise many of the oriental traits of the original 1900s Medlow hotel which featured a Chinoiserie style favoured by Mark Foy. The Majestic’s original Salon Du Thé displayed ornaments and furnishings which included large Chinese vases and porcelain vessels, bamboo-look furniture and silk umbrellas [www.hydromajestic.com.au].

Footnote: Regaining its past glory? Will the refurbished Hydro Majestic rise again to the exalted heights it attained in the inter-war period? Will patrons flock to it again as they once did? Will it be able to attract the higher socio-economic clientele associated with a luxury resort? It is far too early to tell, but it should be noted that there is a lot more choice now in Sydney with high-class hotels and resorts. Nonetheless, the Hydro’s traditional high tea is back, the complex has more restaurant options than ever before, though the guest rooms are still on the small side! What also hasn’t changed to its advantage are the magnificent panoramic views of the Megalong Valley, they remain one of the Hotel’s strongest magnetic attractions.

Above: Flagship of the Mark Foy’s retail empire. The city department store opened in 1885, moving to the Liverpool Street site in 1909 where an ice skating rink was installed on the 5th floor in 1950 for “Fashion Fantasy on Ice” parades. In 1980, having been earlier acquired by Waltons it ceased trading permanently. Today the monolithic heritage building renamed the Downing Centre functions as a state courthouse.

The Accidental Survivor: Express Delivery Courtesy of God’s Posties?

Posted on June 23, 2014April 25, 2021 by funambulator@live.com

Bushwalking

❝An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.❞

~ G K Chesterton

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Suddenly, another voice broke the bush silence, away to the left in front of me, the same voice it seemed as before…maybe. I had only just splashed water from the creek onto my parched lips a minute or two earlier, but they were already dry again…with a renewed sense of purpose I repeated the action, slowly and deliberately spreading the water around my mouth in a massaging motion with my tongue. Composing myself and pursing my lips, I took a deep breath and mustered all of the remaining strength in my now croaky and feeble vocal cords. Starting with a whisper I tried screaming out, “Hello! HELLO, HEL-L-O-O-O, down here in the creek!”.

I strangely felt like I was trying to learn to speak all over again…mercifully by the third ‘hello’ the utterance had become stronger in pitch and reasonably audible. A silence followed – seemingly agonisingly long but only fleeting in actual time lapsed – then a reciprocal greeting from the direction of the bush hinterland. I expect my heart skipped a beat at that very moment with a sheer and unbridled sense of relief…yes! I couldn’t see anyone but “the voice” indicated that I should stay put and he would come down to where I was.

Seconds passed, maybe thirty-forty seconds, “the voice” was now silent. My mind, still rushing at 100 miles an hour, was in such a state that I was thrust into freefall panic mode…he’d stopped communicating with me, my immediate fear: he might just vanish again into the harsh bush scape, never to reach me and my lifeline to the outside world would be dashed once more! A cacophony of doubts were assailing my brain. I had such a heightened sense of anxiety, at that moment the most important thing in the world seemed to be to maintain a constant dialogue with my would-be ‘saviour’! Panicked, I just started calling out to him, “hello, are you there?” again and again, until finally he reciprocated – my relief was tangible!

I figured by the sound of his voice that he appeared to be about 20 metres or so from where I was in the creek, but it took an agonisingly long time for him to make his way down. Several more minutes went by, during which I could hear his boots crunching his way through the rugged and inhospitable bush. He must have had to zig-zag through, around, under and over countless dense scrubs and branches. I waited and watched anxiously for him to appear, until finally he came into my line of vision. He was indeed a welcome sight to behold, the first human I had sighted since the previous Wednesday.

I blurted out the long story-short of my inglorious bush escapade to him. He looked like a fit-looking, stocky young bushwalker, so I could only imagine how much of a complete bush neophyte I must have seemed to him. He reassured me that he and his friends had food and water with them – the word ‘water’ resonated singularly with me (I didn’t experience any cravings for food during my entire ordeal, but my thirst, my desire, for water, was all consuming).

His companions were still winding their way down to the creek bank and didn’t appear for several more minutes. The guy, having emerged from the brush, stepped confidently like an experienced bushman onto one of the large rocks in the creek. He motioned towards a clearing in the bush behind me where he said he could lay out the much needed refreshments from his back-pack. As he led the way, striding purposefully and confidently over the wet rocks …to my complete surprise he suddenly slipped as if on a banana skin and landed half on the rocks and half in the water with an all-mighty thud! I was now anxious for me and him (at least I was no longer alone in my plight!). With real concern for my putative rescuer I checked on his well-being, to my relief he quickly responded that yes he was fine. The shock of seeing him being rent asunder like that left me with a singular jarring thought that had instantly and indelibly imprinted itself in my brain: Jesus!, this guy is going to rescue me! He can’t make it from one side of a 12 foot wide creek to the other without losing his feet and falling slap bang on his arse!?! His dramatic and spectacular fall didn’t exactly install me with confidence as to his credentials as a would-be rescuer. If it wasn’t so serious I would have laughed out loud at that point (probably hysterically) … but in truth it merely underscored just how ultra-treacherous the uneven and obscured creek floor was.

On the safety of firm, dry ground I gulped down the bottle of water provided by my would-be rescuer who identified himself as Nathan. It wasn’t cold, lukewarm at best, but who’s complaining, I was just delighted to get liquid into my depleted system, my kidneys were busy thanking him! I drank a second bottle in equally rapid time. His companions (his wife and his workmate) had by now joined us. Lauren, his wife, offered me carrot sticks and a muesli bar for sustenance, I took them out of politeness and nibbled a bit at a thin carrot in a disinterested way. Water was the only revival fuel that I could contemplate at that precise moment.

As I took some nourishment and slowly started to revive, Nathan delivered some news that astounded me: there was a path, right there where we stood (it was hardly discernible to me but I must have passed it several times whilst trudging east and west) which would take us back up the bushy hillside to the Ross Crescent exit, where my car, and as it turned out, their car, were both parked, 15 metres apart! Amazing! Although Ross Crescent wasn’t far away, it appeared in my depleted condition a very steep and arduous ascent, and seemingly interminable. I was surprised at how drained I now felt despite the sustenance – possibly this was because having been ‘saved’ I had relaxed with relief and the strain of my ordeal had finally had its full and debilitating impact on me…my mental exhaustion had finally caught up with my physical exhaustion!

In any case my energy reserves were completely shot. My personal go-to response in most situations is a characteristic “No, I’m OK” (even if I wasn’t!), but now I couldn’t summon up even the slightest pretence of self-reliance or self-sufficiency, I needed Nathan’s firm guiding arm to pull me up the hill. Every ten or so steps, I had to stop and greedily gulp from Nathan’s bottle of Powerade. I was so eager to rehydrate my system that I was swilling the Powerade down, oblivious of the fact that electrolyte-based beverages are supposed to be sipped slowly. Nathan kept reassuring me that it was not far to the top, not far now, he would intone. Somehow I was not convinced by his earnest entreaties. It seemed far to me, interminably so! Every step I took was a trial of effort, it took an inordinate amount of time till we finally and painstakingly reached the second tier from the top. By now I was well on the way to polishing off Nathan’s second bottle of Powerade!

At this high spot on the mountain, we halted a while because my rescuers wanted to phone the police to report the ‘miracle’ of my rescue. When Nathan got through to the police he informed them of the circumstance and an unwieldy three-way conversation ensued – the phone operator would ask questions which Nathan would relay to me and then he would duly repeat my answers back to the officer. Confusion ensured and I soon tired of this proxy communication and insistently took the phone from my rescue-hero and spoke directly to the police staffer who informed me, to my amazement, that they had received no report whatsoever of my being missing in the Blue Mountains over the previous four days. This was quite mind-blowing news because I had been certain that the hovering helicopter I had regularly spotted overhead on days two and three had been looking for me. But it seems I had been truly in it on my ‘Patma’ all along.

All the while I spoke on the mobile, Nathan had been diligently trying to wave away the flies from my battered and bloodied legs. This was a considerate gesture on his part, but I motioned to him, don’t bother! After all that I had gone through, I just didn’t care anymore about such a minor irritation which I had long since become used to. Let the bloodsucking bugs do their worst, I was out of the nightmarish bush imbroglio, that was all that mattered now. At this juncture I was pretty fed up with the whole experience and just wanted to go home. The police had no report on me, I was qui nihil interest to them (a person of no interest). I was somewhat incredulous, I felt like persona non grata, but also relieved at finding out I was free to go home.

Nathan did his upmost to try to persuade me to go to Nepean Hospital to get checked out. I politely demurred at this suggestion, protesting that I was fine (maybe an egregious overstatement on my part, I would concede) and perfectly capable of driving home. Relieved to get out of the trap I had dug myself into, I now wanted only to get home, get into a hot bath, pour in some epsom salts and Dettol, relax, veg out for a couple of hours and “lick my wounds” – psychic and physical. The question of the damage I had sustained to the various parts of my body, I was prepared to put on the back burner for the time being. Of course I had some concerns about my back and the possible dire implications for my spine (and, less anxiously, for my ribcage), but as my back wasn’t causing me any significant pain at this time aside from the occasional spasms since the accident, I resolved to address the medical issues later. Self-indulgence in the form of a luxuriant soaking, followed by sleep, was what I craved most right now. After further debate, in the end we reached a compromise, I agreed to Nathan’s firm insistence that he drive me home in my car (to make sure that I was all right, he said) and Lauren and friend John would follow in their car.

Before we pushed on up the steep last leg of the vertical track, I had another swig or three of Nathan’s crimson-coloured Powerade. With the firm arm of Nathan to guide me, I very tenderly and slowly hobbled on, up and up yet more steps. In my present state of mental and physical attrition, it seemed like an unending track. Nathan kept reassuring me that it wasn’t far (he had said the same thing ten minutes before!). He indicated with a wave of the hand that the tops of the houses in Ross Crescent had come into sight, I looked and couldn’t see them, but took some comfort from the confident tone of his voice. When we got on to level ground at the top, I recognised the long, rectangular, fenceless property on the right, in front of which would be my car (at least I was hoping it was still there!). Only when I saw the sign marking the beginning of Florabella Track, did I allow myself the thought that, finally, yes, my four day ordeal was over. Across from the sign, sitting patiently for the last 78 hours was indeed my little red Colt. No one had seemed to notice it had been unattended for a protracted amount of time, not the people inside the house, not even any curious, other locals. If anyone did observe it, they perhaps only gave it a passing thought, maybe concluding that it was yet another abandoned vehicle in the bush (there were two such disowned cars residing, more of less permanently, at the Warrimo end of the same track). And, to add a further irony to my predicament, there, just a few steps away from the Colt was the car of my ‘predestined’ rescuers.

First stop as we departed the scene in our respective vehicles was the nearest servo where I filled up on bottled water and, of course, Coca Cola (my long-nurtured hopes for Pepsi dashed as the servo outrageously didn’t stock the brand!). Travelling back to the Inner West, Nathan and I passed time by talking discursively about various topics, cultural norms, politics and religion to name three (my youthful rescuer a little too eagerly disclosed his weekend volunteer role preaching scripture groups at his local church). Nathan also mentioned that John and he were both posties, as was his wife’s father (an altogether charm-free dolt who I had the brief displeasure of meeting when we quickly stopped at Penrith on the way back home). When I heard that my deliverers from the bush imbroglio were all employees (or close relatives) of Australian Post, I exclaimed out loud with a mixture of mirth and relief in my voice, “My God! Saved by Posties!” That brought a laugh to Nathan’s face.

We finally set off from Penrith for the last part of the drive home. It was to take longer than I had hoped though, wife and friend couldn’t keep up with us or kept getting lost and we had to keep stopping and wait for them to catch up…my well of patience was tested but what could I do, I reassured myself that after everything that had happened I could wait a bit longer).

In any event Nathan was there to engagingly “chew the cud” with me or at least to distract me from the episodic twinges of pain I was feeling! In the course of the drive somehow the topic of religion came up again (what a surprise!). Without any prompting Nathan launched into a mini monologue-cum-(polite) rant on the strength of his Christian faith. Over the next half hour or so I got a sampler of Nathan’s doctrinal ideas about religion…such as his belief in the overarching concept of an intelligent design guiding the creation of the world, not to forget his notion of a ‘selective’ God. As he spoke more and more enthusiastically about his preoccupation I muttered sotto voco to myself, “Christ, not just saved by Posties, saved by Religious Posties!” I mused on my new ‘predicament’: here’s Nathan getting full flight into his preaching spiel and his two, no doubt fellow evangelists, following us close behind by car – had I been ‘saved’ from existential peril in the wilderness only to find myself thrust into a world of sanctimonious but friendly God Botherers!

Was I, once again trapped—this time inside my own car—with a well-mannered religious wacko who was going to try to convert me? Not withstanding such misgivings, I was chilled enough after re-hydrating myself to sit back in the passenger seat and let Nathan drone on to his heart’s content. And he did not disappoint, waxing spiritually about the various theological beliefs he was eager to espouse at every given opportunity. Nathan had more than a whiff of the incipient zealot about him and didn’t need any prompting to expand on his heart-felt moral and religious beliefs. I was just happy to relax and re-energise my batteries. Before the journey’s end I had amble evidence to believe that Nathan was decidedly of the “God speaks to me” garden variety of evangelical kooks.

After a period of sitting passively and silently listening to his constant chatter, I couldn’t help myself, even in my diminished state, from engaging with him and playing the “Devil’s Advocate” card (yes I admit, an altogether naturally comfortable role for me!). I brought up one or two of the big religious imponderables, such the contradiction between God’s omnipotence and the stark, unjust realities of the world – the desperate, miserable condition of life for the vast majority of the planet. I posed the question “Why does God allow such an intolerable and horrific situation to exist when he had has all the power he needs to intercede on behalf on the downtrodden?” (In Nathan’s Church God is definitely a he!), giving Nathan’s enough slack on the line to really get his theological teeth into that juicy morsel. As expected, Nathan of course had an explanation for this, a very good one, he added confidently. “Its like this Bruce” Nathan began, with the slightly patronising tone of the “good shepherd” in his voice, and proceeded to recount a puzzling analogy: God, he affirmed, “was like a dentist who would refuse any further service to patients if they neglected to pay their bills”!

In so far as I was prepared to go to try to uncoil the enigma wrapped in a puzzle that was his logic, it seemed for Nathan to boil down to a question of God saving only those who exhibit sufficient faith in him – if I was following him correctly…hallelujah! Craftily if predictably, Nathan managed to avoid directly dealing with the imponderable issue of why an all-powerful and presumably all-caring God would ever allow any suffering, let alone the global epidemic proportions that exist in the world today? As would be expected for “true believers” like Nathan, one needs to search no further than a reaffirmation of faith for the answer, no room for a skerrick of doubt here!

By the time Nathan had pronounced on a few more of his doctrinal hobbyhorses we had reached our ‘destination’ (given my agnosticism-cum-atheism, mine, at least in the ultimate sense, unlike Nathan’s, was obviously not going to be ‘Heaven’). My growing realisation that evangelist Nat and his companions were devotees of what was possibly some kind of fringe evangelical whacko sect did not detract in any way from the genuine and heartfelt gratitude I felt for these three young bush explorers who were definitely in the right place at the right time as far as I was concerned.

On the drive back down the M4, I had waved a $50 note (not having anything smaller!) in Nathan’s direction as a tangible manifestation of gratitude and as recompense for the petrol he would have to use, but he clearly demurred from accepting it. I sensed that putting himself in God’s “Pearly Gates” book for the performing of such a good deed was Nathan’s most coveted reward. After some ritualistic toing and front, me insisting he take it and he declining, he eventually took the $50 and placed it in the dashboard, inferring that we could engage in a dialogue later regarding it(!). A later conversation? I wondered…between me and him? Between God and him or between all three of us? How many were there in this car? It’s only a small hatchback! It was becoming confusing.

Whilst we waited in the car outside my home for Lauren and John’s car to catch up, I managed to turn one of Nathan’s pious homilies on its head and put it to him that he accept the money as an equitable act of faith (whatever that means?!?). God must have signalled his approval of this compromise solution because Nathan relented and slipped the ‘portrait’ of Edith Cowan into his wallet, saying he would put the cash towards he and his wife’s petrol kitty. Fine by me! I profusely thanked my young Australia Post bush rescue team again for their ever so timely intervention. Australia Post, for once transcending rhetoric, really did deliver on this occasion!

After my saviours(sic) had departed I shed and discarded my one remaining boot and hobbled gingerly barefoot into my unit. I felt ratchet, completely stuffed, hardly surprising after four days openly exposed to the elements. I replenished my stocks with water, juices and a little bit of food (I still wasn’t hungry after four days lost in the woods and didn’t regain my appetite for a couple of days). I ran a hot, soothing bath, lowering myself slowly into it and sighed. I then proceeded to gently pour disinfected water over my numerous cuts and scratches, before moving on to my lower back and ribcage to apply a heated water treatment to them.

As I soaked my aching bones, I pondered the question of how I had survived my extreme encounter with nature. I had gone (suicidally?) solo into the bush, I had not informed anyone beforehand as to my intended location, I had no map (not one worthy of the name anyway!), I had gone off-track, I was way too lightly dressed for nights in the cold and without blanket or covering of any kind, and I had taken a woefully inadequate amount of water and no food with me. I had no flare gun to alert potential rescuers of my whereabouts. And, I had injured myself, albeit not so to imperil my survival, although it could easily have been thus. In short, I had done ALL of the wrong things by the bushwalking manual (and the “common sense” manual too!), coming across like a complete tyro, but still managed to survive – somehow.

For weeks after, everyone I divulged my Blue Mountains misadventure to, were only too happy to apply, with full ironic intent, the ‘Bear Grylls’ tag to me! Obviously, a large slice of luck had come down on my side. Having bungled my way into the densely-foliated abyss, and then ineptly and laughingly attempted to extricate myself without success, I clearly needed some sort of effective external intervention to happen. Finding people on the fourth day who were well equipped to salvage what remained of me at a most timely and critical point, could only be described as my good fortune! There are other ways of viewing how I had managed to endure in the bush, if you want to imbue it with sentiment. A close friend who I recounted the story to, marvelled like everyone else at my survival (that is, at my good luck) and commented that it was my late wife looking after me – well, whatever, it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

When I went for a physical check-up two days later, Dr Phil my GP asked perhaps jokingly, perhaps only half jokingly, if I had a death wish. Freud defined the death wish (or ‘death drive’, more precisely he called it) as an unconscious desire for self-destruction. Well, if it is an unconscious state, then who could ever say definitely? But given my erratic behaviour over the whole episode of the four day bush misadventure, it may well seem to an objective third party that I did.

If you examine the bare bones of it, I went out into the great unknown unprepared, without a Plan B. In my conscious mind, I was definitely not trying to put myself in harm’s way, nothing deliberate, no attempt to test my physical and psychological boundaries. By disposition I am far from being an adrenalin junkie deriving a buzz from putting my safety on the line. Extreme risk sports or activities of your bungy-jumping or base-jumping kind do not appeal to me! I am no ‘funambulator’ (tight-rope walker) in any sense of the word, by nature my “Caledonian cautious” approach to life would preclude me, 99 times out of every 100, from putting my body on the line. The last few days were obviously occurrence number 100!

My predicament was one that I just inadvertently stumbled into, unprepared and unanticipated. I hadn’t planned to end up in the hazardous part of the bush that I did, so I had no contingencies in place to deal with the unpredictable. It could so easily have been a mortal mistake. I survived, I’m still not sure how, but it did teach me the invaluable lesson that if you underestimate the bush, or are complacent about it, even for a moment, you will do so at your peril.

Footnote:
Later that night the mystery of the patrolling helicopter was revealed on the evening news. It transpired that the copter (and the other light plane) I had seen were scouring the area for a group involved in an abseiling accident nearby…an abseiler in his early 30s had fallen to his death heroically trying to rescue his girlfriend who had ‘frozen’ and was stranded immobile on a cliff ledge. It was a sobering thought as I reflected afterwards: I had somehow survived my fall, at the same time this poor, unfortunate guy trying to be the Good Samaritan, trying to do the right and noble thing, tragically did not share my good and perhaps undeserved luck.

Just blogging away … doing the hard blog

Continuing the search for signs of Intelligent Life in the University.

Bushwalking

Homebush Bay Perambulations I: A Walk through ‘Toxicity’ … Munitions Dumps and Toxic Mounds

Walkers’ World: Rambling Round a 19th Century Million Pound Foreshore Estate

The Accidental Survivor: Express Delivery Courtesy of God’s Posties?