September 1, 2019
As our house sitting is coming to an end (our owner gets back on Sept. 6) we took one more drive up the Blue Tier; this is only about 15km away but takes a good 25 minutes as all on gravel and very winding and narrow in places, you also climb from around 120m here to 650m at the car park.
This time we took on the Australia Hill Loop walk which is 4.4km and estimated at 2 hours. We in fact took 2 hours 15, mostly due to negotiating the many water hazards on the second half of the loop where the walking track was often the water course (see photos further down).
The track here winds up the hill first to the Summit Mine, one of the last to be mined in the area. Not much remains except a hole in the side of the cliffs and the top winding wheel from an aerial cableway that took the mined ore part of the way downhill to the Anchor Mine (see earlier Post). On the way to here you are rewarded with the first views to the East and coastline.
From here the views start to open up and at this point we are looking mostly South Westerly, the view below includes the snow on Ben Lomond (close up view)
Moving now in a Northerly direction you head towards Australia Hill and pass it eventually to your left but before then are rewarded again with these great views to the East and South across to the coastline around St Helens.
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From here the track gradually takes you down to the main track and the site of the Compere Mine which was the last to operate up here; even less remains here than of the Summit wiht just a few remnants of steel parts scattered in the bush.
After this we started to encounter a lot more standing and running water, much of it taking up the whole path; without too much feet wetting we had to work our way around many of these.
