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Malabar Ridge Middle Beach, Valley of the Shadows & The Clear Place Blinkys Beach
After our dive at Comet we had lunch and walked from Old Settlement where the Milky Way is up onto the ridge, across to Kim's lookout and them Malabar before coming back down to Neds Beach road. In most part this is a well marked and maintained track. It starts with steep steps beyond the cow paddocks, then you can choose to go on to North Beach and Mt Eliza or right which takes you up onto the ridge and then along the ridge. The walk is around 4km all up and took us a bit over 2 hours. In places the track can be slippery if it has rained recently. It also runs very close to the cliff edge in places so care must be taken. But the views are spectacular, Balls Pyramid is visible in part behind Mt Lidgbird from a number of locations.
Middle Beach is a great place to see how the swell is. In our case we saw the swell was huge. Past Middle Beach you can walk on to Valley of Shadows and The Clear Place. These are short walks and fairly level, starting at the location for the new power station. The views out to sea are really nice and both are quite peaceful places. There is also a dairy here. I saw a stainless steel milk can and 2 glass bottles with coins on them ready for milk to be collected. See the picture below.
Sunday May 6 we can't dive again so we head off from Milky Way to Mt. Eliza. The walk takes you up to the ridge where you can go right across the ridge to Malabar or left down to North Bay. This take you steeply back down to the beach at North Bay. Just in from the beach is a very well set up BBQ area with shelters and toilets. Due to the rain the island has had most of this area was underwater. We left our snorkelling gear and Jen's pack here and headed off to Mt. Eliza. The track was underwater for about 20m so Jen walked it in her diving socks while I wore my reef walkers. It's a steep climb up to Mt Eliza which is 149m above sea level. The track is narrow and runs very close to the unguarded cliff in places. Once at the top the views across the Admiralties and back across the lagoon are well worth it. We headed back down to the beach hoping to snorkel in the bay. At the far end of the beach the sand was very sharp with coral and I could not walk it. So we decided to come back another day and snorkel the bay.
Monday we walk up to Goat House Cave. Goats have been eradicated from the island and I'm unsure why this cave high up on the rock face of Mt Lidgbird is named such. The walk is 2.1km from the end of a gravel road past Capella lodge. It starts on board walks and several bridges across Soldier Creek before leaving the creek and heading up towards the ridge. The first part is 800m to a fork in the path where you can either go onto Goat house cave or left to Intermediate hill. After a short distance the track starts to wind up the mountain, It becomes less distinct and you need to look carefully for the markers which are red paint on the trees. The track continues upwards quite steeply then you come to the first of a number of ropes that are there to help with the climb. A number of the sections would be nearly impossible to get up without using the rope. In some sections the track is very narrow and close to the edge so a rope helps to keep away from the edge. The last few hundred metres is very steep and take you up to a sign that says goat house cave 0.3km. We walk along a narrow ridge then come to a rope hanging down from stainless steel loops in the rock face. I climb up the rope to where it levels out and heads across the rock face and around a bend in the face. The cave is beyond this but the rock ledge is narrow and I was feeling affected by vertigo so did not proceed further. Neither Jenny or I are really comfortable with heights so we rest at this point and enjoy the view. It has take us at least an hour and a half to climb up and about the same to get back down again. The climb is not hard stamina wise but technically challenging as the ground is damp and slippery and there are sharp rocks and tree roots aplenty, not to mention the rope assisted sections. This walk is definitely not for the faint hearted. The walk is rated a class 4 but then Mt Eliza is also rated a class 4 and this is a much higher risk walk. I'm told that if you get to the cave it is quite large and deep and there are views to Balls Pyramid from there. Maybe next time we will go up with some one who know it well and can help us on the tougher parts. Young Kongie (Brendon) boasts he has gone all the way up in 3/4 of an hour.
Blinkys Beach is a very long beach at the southern end of the runway. As we were coming back past the airport we saw a RAAF hercules do a land and take off. They fly out to LHI quite often for training. The relatively short runway (1,000m) and tricky winds make for good practice. We had positioned ourselves on the roadside and the very end of the runway hoping that it might make another pass right over the top of us but it didn't come back. Hoping for a better view we walked up onto Blinkys Beach and watched the big surf for a while before heading back to The Anchorage for a large cappuccino.,
This site was last updated 07/05/12 |
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