2021 03 04 Mt Ainslie Quarries with MelbaShed
This was an 11.9Km Medium-Hard walk from a car park in Hackett, North Canberra up along several tracks to the top of Mt Ainslie and its Lookouts over central Canberra. The views were superb and showed the salient features that make Canberra so unique. We also walked down some special little foot tracks to the two Quarries as well as visiting the Poppy’s Cafe at the Aust War memorial. This was Melba Shed walk No 250 of 4th Mar 2021.
Featured image – Melba Shed guys at Mt Ainslie Labyrinth
I led this walk with 7 walking. 6 met at Melba Shed and then drove in 2 cars to Kellaway St, Hackett, in North Canberra where we met one more.
Then we walked from 8.37AM through a bush track to the bottom of the Old Summit Tip Track which we walked up to a small turnoff & visited the old 5 Senses Bush Labyrinth which is starting to show signs of wear & tear. We then retreated to the main track & continued to the top and the 5 Ways junction taking the main CCT track up to the top to visit the Trig top & the public main lookout over central Canberra.
We then went down the main car ascent road for a short distance before finding a 4W track then a mountain bike very narrow bush track that took us down to the main road again before we could take a more formal bush track down parallel to the main road. After quite a decent & walk we turned right to take another track across to the Quarry Access Rd which we did north until we had to climb a rough track again before reaching the level of the Quarry & entering it in another 100m or so.
After a rest in the Upper Quarry we headed south past where we came up & took a nice footpad through a She-oak forest & to another management track which we crossed & walked along a vague animal pad to pick up another management track which we walked east on & down to where the stone circles were. We breezed past 8 or 9 of these circles before coming across a giant daddy Kanga & then we dropped down to enter the Lower Quarry with its mixture of various old articles & some attempts at graffiti on some of the stone walls. We then dropped down some rough dirt tracks to join the Campbell Link track before turning down a rough track & a footpad that took us right to the start of the Kakoda main summit trail.
Then we went down to the Australian War Memorial’s ‘Poppy’s Cafe’ & had shakes, coffees etc. On the return we went back to the start of the Kokoda Track & turned west and followed an embankment around past Campbell High School & then to the Ainslie Village area & then up to join the Socks Track north. The tracks along the embankment were easy walking & at its north end had a lot of tree coverage. The Socks Track took us to the Ainslie Link Track which took us to the Ainslie Houses Track & then along the Ainslie Embankment Track which let the guys admire the backyards, trees & modern architecture of the properties along the edge of the Nature Reserve.
We reached the cars around 1.05PM.
It was an Medium-Hard walk of 11.9Km, taking 4hrs 28m incl breaks.
Walkers: Bob Salmond, Drew McDonald, Ian de Plater, John Edge, John Marsh, Nevile Viney, Greg Hutchison
Drivers: Neville, Drew, Greg
Map of walk | Pictures in Google Photos | files including gps located in Google Drive
Notes re Map: GPS Map View provided using Garmin Basecamp on an Open Streets Map (OSM) NSW cycle base | The area of the walk is covered by the NSW 1:25,000 topo map CANBERRA
