Varirata. In July 2008.

The First Journey.

The POM bushwalkers arrived at Varirata on a pleasant Sunday morning with some cloud cover and cool temperatures. The freshly conceived plan was to circumnavigate the Park in a clockwise direction. We started out all keen as Mustard as we left the Park in order to find the re-entry point to our lap.

It wasn’t long into the walk where it was discovered that footwear was important as was trekking fitness, yet we all supported each other and survived to tell the tale. The first leg of the journey is a comfortable descent to a creek in which we rested up briefly. The dry season was well underway and the track surface was relatively dry.

From the creek, we headed up into the clouds and discovered a bit of rock scaling and a fairly steep technical ascent, before heading ever upwards towards Gare’s Lookout. From here it was decided to break up the group as one team would continue along the Boundary track and the others would descend back down to the team vehicles.

I chose to guide the crew back to the cars and it was here that we would head along the flatter part of the course to head off the rest of the walkers. We rejoined all together again, and returned to the cars.

About 7-8kms in travel meant for a good hit out for all concerned.

The Second Journey

A week later, around lunchtime, it was decided that a small group of Kokoda aspirees would head back to Varirata for a quick lap of the lookouts. Hastily we gathered up everything and headed east into the Sogeri plateau. At Varirata, we motored around the lookouts, firstly heading along the 30minute then left up to Gare’s and then back down to the vehicles.

The track was dry, yet there proliferated many fungi and again the cloud was heavy in the air.

A quick 6km loop of the track was a good tonic for a lazy Sunday arvo.

The Third Journey; Remembrance Day.

Remembrance Day fell on the happiest Wednesday of them all this year, and it was decided to honour the diggers by recreating our own little Kokoda by traversing the mud of the nearby Owen Stanleys and what better place then Varirata.

The Rangers of the Park must have known that a PNG MP was visiting on this day as they left the gatepost abandoned and were busy on brushcutters cleaning up the bottom lookout. They did a good job of it, long overdue but the outcome was decent. Not quite Bomana standard, but who am I to judge.

Anywho, the walk was fantastic, we left the carpark, headed for the bottom lookout, and then followed the track all the way around the boundary back to the Park entrance some 7kms away. We then turned around and retraced our steps making for a 15km total with some seriously technical climbing and descending. The Eastern side of the Park was considerably slipperier and tougher than the usual lookout loop.

After 6 hours of bashing around, a few moments chatting to aforementioned MP, a discovery that another POM bushwalker had been spotted in the park and admiring the longevity of the POM twitchers we left the Park satisfulled of a good decent walk.

And we spotted a few more fungi.