Walking the Walks

I walked around Bruce as part of the walkcanberra.com route on the website I've been following. it explains that Bruce was established in 1968 and named after Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Nationalist: the eighth Prime Minister of Australia; the first Chancellor of the Australian National University; and the first Prime Minister to lose their seat (at the 1929 election). Many of its streets are named after people and places associated with tertiary education in Australia. 

There were paths, trees, hills, lakes and (I'm pleased to report), a street library.

One of the places I walked was Flea Bog Flat, which was part of the Old Weetangera Road. The information panel alludes to the fact that roads in country NSW were notoriously treacherous and includes a quote from Samuel Schumack (who has a street named after him in Weetangera, where the streets are named for ACT pioneers). 

"On the east side the mud was about three feet deep for three chains or more, and like glue. On the west side it was a foot to eighteen inches deep, with the consistency of thin gruel."

The panel also explains that, "this area was heavily frequented by Aboriginal groups with an ochre quarry, artefact scatters and a report of over 300 people camping near the Emu Bank Homestead in 1958 and 1863. 'Queen' Nellie Hamilton is believed to have camped on Emu Ridge."

I got slightly lost on Gossan Hill, but it was very beautiful so I didn't really mind.  Apparently a Gossan - a Cornish word meaning 'iron hat' - is an intensely oxidised rock exposing an ore deposit or mineral vein. The reddish stones at this site have links to the molten crust of the earth extruded 430-415 million years ago (the late Silurian period). Running in a north easterly/ south-westerly direction under this cleared area of woodland, the gossan cuts through folded sandstone and shale formed 450-445 million years ago (the Ordovician period).

The gossan's formation may be associated with the quartz outcrops that can be seen at either end of the cutting in College Street. Among the outcrops can be seen some of the different iron oxides that compose the gossan: black magnetite; reddish brown hematite; and yellow limonite. 

Over the past 65 million years the exposed areas of the gossan has weathered, impregnating the surrounding soil with coloured ochres. The Ngunnawal people held large gatherings here, and used the coloured ochres as a ceremonial pigment. Local farmers Frederick Campbell and Samuel Schumack documented these gatherings in 1856 and the early 1860s.

Samuel Schumack and his father, Richard, emigrated from Ireland in 1856 and worked as shepherds on George Campbell's Duntroon and Emu Bank estates. The gossan is on the 100 acres Richard Schumack selected on Emu Bank in 1865.

In 1915 the Commonwealth resumed this land and leased it to soldier-settler Robert John Butt until his accidental death in 1926. Apparently he was blown up by some dynamite, with which he was illegally fishing. If you like that sort of thing (as I do), there's some interesting information about it all in the archives. 

There are two stormwater runoff ponds adjacent to Eardley Street in Bruce, which collect water from Calvary Hospital and the nearby Canberra Institute of Technology Campus. They are separated by a bridge, and while one of them is perfectly normal looking, the other one is pink. 

The pink stuff is an Australian native fern species called Axolla Pinnata and the fact that it's pink usually signals good water quality. Dr Will Higgisson, research fellow in freshwater biology, says the plant is usually green but turns pink to purple in low phosphorous water, indicating all is well and actually the opposite of conditions causing algae. The plant is turned pink by anthocyanins, the pigments which also give raspberries and blueberries their colour, and it is not harmful to aquatic or other wildlife or humans. 

Apparently the lake has become somewhat of a tourist attraction with people applying filters to bring out the natural pink and highlight it on Instagram. Here's a version I quite like modified with Prisma.

And here's that street library! I borrowed a book: Mangoes and Quince by Carol Field, which I shall doubtless review in due course.

We finished another puzzle, and I will add that to the latest puzzle post, but I am proud of managing to do so, when we have such cat interference! Here is Melantho making the point that she is always the centre of attention.

I pass this house often on my walks around the neighbourhood. I think this bank of flowers is absolutely beautiful. 

We have birds in the trees in our garden - we encourage them to visit with bird seed. The colours of the parrots can be bright and beautiful - you will have to look closely to see the Eastern Rosella - but the big white sulphur-crested cockatoos also like to pay us a call. The photograph of the kittens looking at the bird through the window may not quite show the scale of the thing, but it is about the size of both of them put together.

At the moment, weekends are made for walking, so on Saturday I walked with The Purple Lady to reccy part three of The Bloody Long Walk (to be walked at the end of November), and on Sunday I walked with The Purple Lady and The Luminosity around the central basin of Lake Burley Griffin, after which we rewarded ourselves with breakfast by the lake.