Ok, all nostalgia gone. Must get this project done while the weather holds. Indian summer can’t last. So though I hadn’t slept the night before, and the night before that as well – bloody moon – knew that I had to get walking or I had no chance of getting the two last squares before I’d be away for a week.
Spent the morning at work. Headed off up into the escarpment just after 1pm. Very hot. The pack felt heavy and no amount of pushing the pace seemed to get me into the necessary zone. Everything felt hard. I had a meeting in town at 4:30pm, so needed to hurry.
My plan was to make the big circuit – up Mt Nebo, then south in the direction Mt Kembla, up and west to Harry Graham Drive, north along the road to Robertson Lookout and back down finally via Mt Keira and the Jumpers. I was hoping there would be cars somewhere along the Harry Graham Drive section, but wasn’t sure. I had a back up plan in mind – if all else failed I would remove a piece from another wreck in the Jumpers – but was keen to discover a new site rather than just continue to move back and forth between the Jumpers and the Mt Nebo slide. Discovered a small green car panel at the edge of the track as I walked through the gate on the water board land up beyond Mt Nebo. Thought of just stopping there and cutting that, but knew that I needed to do the full circuit up to the very top of the escarpment, linking together all the various sites into a single walk.
The rough track up to Harry Graham Drive was overgrown with weeds, so much so that in places the track was scarcely visible. I did my best to walk confidently to scare off any snakes.
I was still struggling to move swiftly up the hills. My tee-shirt was utterly soaked in sweat and I regretted carrying so little water. But eventually I reached the dark top section of rainforest and came out at the derelict mining depot on Harry Graham Drive. No sign of dumped cars.
Derelict mining depot
Dumped tv
Just a short way north along the road, however, I came across a large slide full of fresh household waste and wrecked cars. An associated fire had burnt out a portion of the bush opening up a fantastic view of the Port Kembla steelworks, Five Islands and the sea. I tried to take a photograph of both the hillside strewn in trash and the distant view, but it wasn’t possible. The contrast was too great. The distant view was too bright and the sordid forest scene too dark. So I photographed them separately, though they properly belong together.
Coast view
Slope
I had to make my way down to the twisted mess of burned out vehicles, but could not safely descend the trashy slope. Managed to squeeze down through some tangled vines and then traverse across to an exposed rusted door panel beside a sordid double mattress. I took the photographs that I always take, put the battery into the angle grinder, donned my safety equipment, switched on the grinder and, taking care not to stand too close or to cut too deep, removed a square from the panel. Once again, even though I made a lot of noise and was working right beside a paved road, I attracted no attention whatsoever. More photographs of this incomprehensible place and then an awkward scramble back up to the road.
Only a hundred metres or so further I came upon another longer and even more desolate slide. I realised at once that this would have to be my destination for the final trip.
A little further again, at the entrance to Robertson Lookout, there were a number of heaps of household garbage. This area has become more remote and less frequented since Mt Keira Road closed, making it easier to dump with impunity. Clearly all sorts of people prefer to sneak up during the night and trash the local state conservation park rather than pay the new higher tip fees. Standing there, having seen this place deteriorate so much over the past few months, there was no way that I could regard this in terms of some blurring of the natural and the cultural. It just seemed like the most abject vandalism.
Robertson Lookout car park
Continuing on it occurred to be that the only saving grace of people who do this kind of thing is that they are not hypocrites. They don’t care about the escarpment. They don’t care about the consequences of their illegal dumping. They are happy to consume and discard wherever suits them. But what about me? I oppose their dumping and yet continue to consume stuff. Do I really imagine that there is some proper place to dispose of all my junk, some effective remedial process that makes it somehow safely and inconsequentially disappear? I guess I am confident that there are better ways than tucking it away illicitly in the bush, but how genuine are these alternatives? Is it conceivable that all of my junk can be discretely recycled without having any wider deleterious impact on the environment? And not only the environment that I may wish to walk through, but also the environment that escapes my immediate attention, that is way high up in the air or ten feet underground, that may be difficult to see or muddy, slushy, inaccessible and un-beautiful?
With these gloomy thoughts in mind, the square of rusted metal in my hand and an eye on the time I hurried down the final track home.
Rusted panel
Close up
Cut out
Square