This circuit is epic. This circuit is hard.

The 11km Southern Circuit starts at the Cooks Mill Campsite (Google Map). Going clockwise, it is made up of:

• Tweed Spur Road - Messmate Track - Wells Cave Track - Razorback Track - Jawbone Creek Track - Saint Bernard’s Track

It’s epic because of the amasing terrains and the magnificent views.

It’s difficult because both the Wells Cave track and the Razorback track are grade 5 and require quite a bit of rock scrambling. In particular, the Wells Cave track has 2 short sections which are exposed rock ledges and rock walls which are practically vertical. It is borderline bouldering. It’s risky enough that I didn’t dare to do it solo, at least not the first time. Hence, I asked my brother to join me.

Some stats:

• Difficulty: Grade 5

• Length: 11km

• Accumulated elevation gain: 650m

• Highest point: Sugarloaf Peak at 912m

AllTrails map: here.

The preparation

As usual, the photography gear of my choice was my ultra-compact outdoor adventure kit:

• Olympus EM5 Mark III

• Panasonic Leica 9mm f/1.7 (i.e.18mm-e in FF)

• Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150 f/4-5.6R (i.e. 80-300mm-e in FF)

Packed in a chest porch for instant access, the whole kit weighed only 1kg (2.2lbs)! You can’t really find anything lighter than this with this image quality and flexibility!

I also had my iPhone 12Pro, for both photo taking and GPS navigation with the AllTrails app with the map downloaded for offline access. All my other hiking necessities were carried in a 10L hydration backpack. For safety, I brought a backup phone, a powerbank, a first-aid kit and a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB).

I had estimated this circuit would take 5 hours to complete. Allowing for an extra hour for photo taking, the hike would take 6 hours all up. (And we were pretty much spot-on!)

Sunrise was at 7am. Ideally, to catch the early morning light for better landscape photography, I wanted to do some night hike and reach Sugarloaf Peak at least 1/2 hour before dawn. However I were quite certain the Wells Cave track was too dangerous to climb in the dark. So, I made a compromise. I planned our hike such that we would start the difficult climb after daybreak at around 7:30-8am. Working backward, we needed to leave home at 4am and reach our starting point at Cooks Mill Campsite at 6am.

Cooks Mill Campsite - Tweed Spur Road - Messmate Track

It was mid-May, just end of autumn. Yet, when we arrived at Cooks Mill Campsite, temperature had dropped to 3°C. We had to wear 4 layers and gloves. It took us a while to warm up and gradually take off the layers over the next couple of hours. (The temperature eventually reached 17°C at noon.)

Tweed Spur Road and Messmate track were a breeze. There was a 400m elevation gain. But spread across the 4.5km, it wasn’t difficult. It was uneventful.

Sugarloaf Saddle car park - Wells Cave Track

At 7:30am, we reached the picnic area at the Sugarloaf Saddle carpark. This was the starting point of Wells Cave track (and the parallel Canyon track), our highlight of the day! We had our toilet break and had some snack before tackling this difficult climb. There were enough signage warning about the danger of this track.

The primary way to navigate here was to follow the orange triangular markers. If you didn’t see the next marker after a couple of minutes, you knew you were off course.

Wells Cave

4/5 way into the Wells Cave track, we reached the Wells Cave. It was not really a cave. Instead it was a very narrow dark passage sandwich between 2 vertical rock walls. At the narrowest section, we had to squeeze through sideway with our backpack taken off.

The adrenaline-filled 5 mins of rock scrambling

I said Wells Cave Track had 2 difficult section. One was right before the cave and one right after. The one after the cave was the hardest.

I was glad that in our preparation for this hike we had read a few blogposts and watched a couple of YouTube videos (see References below). We had learned a relatively safe way to climb this section: turn the torso around, “sit” the butt on the wall, and use our legs to push against the free-standing slab of rock to push the body up a small bit at a time. You can see in the sequence of photos below to get an idea how we did it.

Sugarloaf Peak

Once we went pass the hardest climb, we were at the Sugarloaf Peak. Below us were seas of cloud and mountain ranges. We hanged around at the peak to take photos and relax for ~1/2 hour.

Look towards east, in the direction of Merrijig:

We can roughly make out the distant mountain ranges in the 3D map below.

Look towards west, in the direction of Mount Michell:

The road visible should be Cathedral Lane.

South Jawbone Peak and North Jawbone Peak viewed from Sugarloaf Peak

Look towards north, in the direction of the ridge leading to Cathedral Peak, it is the stunning view of the Cathedral Range itself:

Match to the 3D terrain map below:

A - Sugarloaf Peak (where we were)
B - Well Cave

1. South Jawbone Peak

2. North Jawbone Peak

3. Cathedral Peak

4. Neds Peak

Razorback Track

The Razorback track along the ridge was also rocky and required some scrambling.

The Farmyard - Descend down back to Jawbone carpark and then Cooks Mill Campsite

Once we reached The Farmyard, the terrain and the vegetation changed in something more familiar. The Jawbone Creek Track and Saint Bernard’s TrackThe were made of steps. The descend was harder than expected because our fatigue kicked in.

Now we’ve done the Southern Circuit, we’ll certainly come back to do the Northern Circuit next!

Tips

• Definitely avoid doing this track when it’s wet.

• Wells Cave is ascending only.

• Need to bring 2L of water. More when it’s hot weather.

References

• Trail Hiking - Southern Circuit, Cathedral Range State Park

• TravellingTam - blogpost

• Travel Make Me Do it - blogpost

• Park Victoria

  • Wells Cave Track

  • Visitor Guide PDF

• YouTube video

• Beyond Wild Places - Guide to Hiking in Cathedral Ranges

Before Karen and I went to Tasmania in March for our holiday, I read some something online by pure chance about seeing aurora in Tasmania. We both got excited. Sadly, the timing wasn’t right and we didn’t see any of it. When we returned home, I turned obsessed and made it a mission to figure out if the aurora could be seen within driving distance in Melbourne.

The short answer is “yes”, sort of.

I did some research online and joined a couple of Facebook groups1. In summary:

• Auroras (or “polar lights”) are caused by solar wind. Its strength is measured by a K-index. Like other weather forecasts, Bureau of Meteorology publishes a webpage that shows its observations and forecasts.

• There is Aurora Borealis at the North Pole and Aurora Australis at the South Pole.

• Since Aurora Australis is a South Pole phenomenon, the more south you are the better chance it is to spot it. That said, it’s not an absolute thing. I saw people from places like Grampians and Werribee posted amasing aurora photos.

• To see it, you need a cloudless clear sky and stay away from light pollution.

Light pollution inside the Port Phillip Bay is too strong. Any south facing location along the coastal line outside the Port Phillip Bay will be a good candidate.

Our pick was Cape Schanck. Then we waited. We tried on 24 March 2023. Result was okay but not great. And we waited again…

There are numerous websites and mobile apps that can help. I spent 10 mins to vex a few of them and picked a freemium phone app called, obviously, “Aurora”.

It shows long range forecasts, cloud condition, a “heat map” of the potential coverage, etc. On April 24, 2023, the K-index was above 6 (high!) and sky was unbelievable clear.

Sunset was at 5:40pm. Astronomical twilight2 was at around 6:40-7:10pm.

We arrived at the carpark at around 6:15pm. We decided to walk down to Pebble Beach. There was still twilight and it was Crescent Moon.

I later saw people on the Facebook group said they went to the same place around the same time and could see the aurora by their naked eyes. But we couldn’t. Maybe we didn’t look hard enough. Maybe it was our poor eyesight. Regardless, the camera had no problem to capture it.

Here another take of the aurora against Pulpit Rock.

By the time we headed back home at around 8:30pm, the crowded started showing up and the carpark was full. Everyone were taking photos. And for those walking around, we needed to use our torches. I guess we had ruined a few of people’s photos here and there.

Most half-decent torches have a low-lux red mode which reduces the disturbance to a minimum. You can see the faint aurora in the background in the first shot below.

On our way back, the moon was setting. But we noticed it too late. I didn’t have time to set up my tripod and only got blurry handheld shots.

The starting point of this trail was the same carpark, the same starting point last week. Last week’s trail went west. This weekend’s trail went east. The entire trail was made up of very wide gravel tracks. There were loose rocks. There were some uphill climbs. Otherwise, it was a relatively easy track.

Alltrails map: here.

Since I knew I wanted to take photos of the running river with slow shutter speeds, I took my monopod fitted with a no-frills ball-head. A tripod would’ve been better. The monopod was barely stable enough at 1sec shutter speed at certain focal lengths, even with Olympus’ IBIS. But its featherlight weight was more suitable for running.

I’d also planned to take some photos in the twilight before sunrise, before I really started my run. Weather forecast said sunrise was 6:45am. When I arrived at the carpark at about 6am, the sky was already glowing purple red. At these magic hours, the light quality changes every minute. As seen below, in the space of 15 minutes, the sky turned from purple red to golden yellow.

The first half of the trail hiked up a ridge onto Mount Lofty’s “peak” which was merely 120m high. But the surrounding views and landscapes were still magnificent.

The 2nd half of the trail simply followed the windy Yarra River.

The making of the first photo

The first photo of the lone cluster of grass at the beginning of this post was actually among the last batch of photos taken at the spot below. I almost didn’t take the shot. I was searching for colourful subject to contrast the water reflection and nearly dismissed the boring cluster of grass.

You can see the cluster of grass at the centre of the stream. You can also see the golden yellow and green were reflections of the trees at the opposite bank of the river, and the blue was reflection of the sky. The grass and the river were mostly in the shadow. That allowed the reflections to stand out.

Anticipating using some slow shutter speeds under bright daylight, I brought my Olympus OM-1 which has built-in Live ND1. It came in handy to reduce the exposure by 3-4 stops. To made the shot, I put the camera onto the monopod and found a vantage point where the bright yellow reflection of the tree trunk lined up next to the step-drop of the stream. I used the short tele lens to frame tight into the details to create a composition where the step-drop and the yellow reflection created suggestive diagonal lines to lead the eyes and the grass sat at one side off-centre acting as a visual anchor point. The colourful reflections and the wavy silk-like patterns are also the key elements of the composition.

I used a slow shutter speed to let the running water “paint” the wavy patterns. I knew from experience a shutter speed between 1/2sec and 1 sec would work well. I tried various combinations of shutter speeds, both landscape and portrait orientations, slightly different compositions and repeated a few times to capture different swirl patterns. Some general breeze came and went, causing the grass to sway from time to time. That needed a bit of patience to wait for the right moment and a few repeats to get acceptable sharp images. This one shot is the one I liked the most.

Click on the follow gallery to see different crops that I tried.

Alltrails map: here.

One immediate unforgettable thing was the scent, the aroma in the air. To my nose, it smelt like cedar wood. However, from a google search, it seems it was “Yellow Box” eucalyptus (eucalyptus melliodora). I’m not really sure.

The photo above and the photo below were taken at starting point just off the carpark. Two features on the Olympus OM-1 made this shot possible: Live ND allowed me to use slow shutter speed without bring real ND filters; IBIS allowed hand-holding this at this slow shutter speed without a tripod.

There were a few uphill hikes. Otherwise, I’d say it was moderate, not particularly difficult. The original trail provided by Alltrails was an in-and-out route along Yarra River. One side of the trail was Yarra River. The other side was private properties with plenty of warning signs telling you not to trespass.

I modified the route into an (anti-clockwise) loop. What was a mistake! The very last leg (circled in red in the map above) turned out to be inside a private property. I ended up taking a detour via Clifford Dr to get back to the main road to loop back to the carpark. Lesson learnt.

It really required a bit of mental energy to get myself out of bed. My original plan was to do the Scouts Track & Market Garden Track at the Warrandyte State Park. However the weather had been quite unpredictable and I was worried about flood water and really muddy tracks. So, that has to wait for next week. Instead, I did a 10k run at the nearby Jells Park.

This is also the first time I tried out these compression tights. My brother swore by them. He said they helped faster recovery but only 2XU tights work (because of their proprietary knitting technology?). Well, I don’t really know yet. The final verdict may end up in another post. Two things I can say now: (1) They are tight, seriously tight. (2) I didn’t get the transformed six-pack shown on the package. On the contrary, my fatty waist line was really squeezed and looked like lava about to overflow. (Not going to show it here as it will cause unnecessary distress.)

Even though it was drizzling and wet, there were plenty of people running, cycling and doing all kinds of sports at Jells Park. I think the large running group was doing their parkrun day.

The current was strong in the Dandenong Creek after the overnight rains. I’m always fascinated by the abstract patterns “painted” by running currents at slow shutter speeds. It must be an influence from the William Neill. I like his brand of “intimate landscape”. i.e. “Landscapes within a landscape”.

I had tried a number of compositions and shutter speeds. Since the wind never stopped, all the plants included in the foreground turned out blurry. I had to go pure abstract. The one above is the one I like most. I didn’t carry a tripod when I ran. The shot relied solely on Olympus camera’s magical IBIS2.

I had read about Galen Rowell in the 1990s during the film era. Galen was a legend in landscape and nature photography. He wore many hats. He was a world-class rock climber. He perfected many photographic techniques1. He was an inventor who had invented a number accessories2 when nothing on the market satisfied his needs. He was a teacher and prolific writer. He played an important role in making the 35mm SLR the successful format and form factor.

As my wife and I started traveling more after the Covid lockdowns, I wanted to make the most out of our trips. I wanted to take exceptional first-rate photos. After all, holiday trips are not cheap. I came across a few articles written by Thom Hogan3 about Galen Rowell and his philosophies, which got me into a frenzy mode. I bought a few of Galen’s books and started reading them to cover to cover.

(The photo above was taken in our first overseas trip in Dec 2022 since Covid lockdowns. The building on the right is Párisi Udvar Hotel Budapest. The building on the left is Klotild paloták.)

It will be a disservice to Galen’s teachings if I attempt to summarise them. There is no way I can cover their breadth and depth. However, there are 3 points that have been most impactful on me.

First, “Be there”. Or to use Thom Hogan’s words: “Galen put his body in places where others don’t and can’t get.” A photo tells a story in a still frame. Tell a unique and one-of-a-kind story. Get to places where others don’t go.

Second, don’t waste the magic hours (the 2-hour window around sunrise and the 2-hour window around sunset). Light quality matters. Mediocre light begets mediocre photos. Great light begets great photos. Sunrises and sunsets are in limited supply. If we live to 100 years old, we only experience them 2 x 356 x 100 times.

Third, Galen wrote an article title “Photography on the Run”. Its first 2 sentences reads: “For years I kept photography and running separate. If I saw remarkable light and form on a trail run, I would say, ‘If only I had my camera’ ”. That sounds familiar. I always love hiking and have got into running since the Covid lockdown. Then, why not trail running? Why not combining photography and trail running? Why not planning my running at pre-dawn so that I will at interesting places under interesting lighting conditions around dawn?

See also

Galen Rowell’s books that I’m reading:

• Mountain Light

• The Inner Game of Outdoor Photography

• Galen Rowell’s Vision

Articles about Galen Rowell:

• Chasing Galen by Thom Hogan

• Lessons Learned from Galen Rowell by Steven Werner, Outdoor Photography, 2019.

I read from somewhere that Bourke’s Lookout offers the best panoramic view of the Melbourne City. I was disappointed once but not the 2nd time. The photos are the proof.

April 2, 2023, pre-dawn trail run.

Mt Dandenong has tons of walking tracks. There are multiple ways to get up to Bourke’s Lookout. I took the challenge. I took the most direct and probably the steepest route: Scar’s Track. It’s a 3km short and moderately hard track. The track was steep with loose rocks. I started at about 4:15am. Excluding the time taken to take photos, it took me about 1 hour to go up and 30 mins to come back down. Since the track was steep, there was actually not much running…

Alltrails map: here.

I had actually visited Bourke’s Outlook 2 weeks ago via Zig-Zag Track. But that day was really foggy. The promised panoramic view of the Melbourne city was nowhere to be seen. So I decided to come back again but via a different route. Since I knew I wanted to take panoramic photos blending the twilight with the artificial lights from the city, I knew I needed long exposures. I brought my tripod that I don’t usually carry for my trail runs.

The above photo is the close-up shot of the right end of the panoramic shot at the top. The layers of mountain ranges are intrigued. A friend of mine told me the closest at the front should be Christmas Hills.

The above photo was taken a bit later before I headed back home. I was attracted by the interesting cloud formation lit by the twilight. The spot at the bottom left with the cluster of high-rises is Glen Waverley. It’s quite amazing that The Glen shopping centre is recognisable.

On my way back, other people gradually showed up climbing the track.

Subscribe now