Secret Swamping

Yesterday I went on a walk to the Secret Swamp with thirteen other people for a couple of hours. We saw three swamps.

We started at Katoomba Library and took a bus to Darwin's Walk which starts from Wilson Park at Wentworth Falls.


The Aboriginal Interpreter Ranger from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Janelle, first showed us things that aboriginal people would have used.

Janelle showing us coolamon, woomera, shields and boomerangs

Then we started on our walk. Every now and again we would stop somewhere and the Council Environment man, Mike, would tell us something about the enviroment or Janelle would show us bush tucker.

Janelle telling us about bush tucker

Mike told us about the Giant Dragonfly and the Blue Mountains skink, both endangered and about how important the swamps are, how they are in danger and how they can be protected.

Mike pointing out a yabby in the creek (Ishbel closest to camera)

We walked along until we came to a pool and a cave. Janelle had brought some ochre with her and she showed us how to wet it and make a paint which we then put on ourselves. Janelle said her daughter used to put it on as eyeshadow and lipstick so some of the other girls did the same. I made a band on my wrist with it. Janelle said ochre is a good sunscreen.

Janelle, Aniko and Mike with the Secret Swamp kids. You can't see it in this unfortunately blurry photo,
but most of the kids are wearing ochre on their faces (Ishbel front far right)

From there we headed back to the bus. Janelle, Mike, Mum and I had to walk back to the car. Mike said it would only take ten minutes and it took about twenty.

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This was a library school holiday activity. Aniko, our Children's and Young Adult's Team Leader, 'persuaded' me to put Ishbel's name down and then put me down as a staff helper. We had a really nice morning. The weather was perfect (it's been miserable all week) and we learned heaps. Aniko wrote a piece for our library blog:

We all met at Katoomba library at 10am. Our bus driver, Dusan, had a problem about counting the number of seats in his bus and we ended up having to take the Ranger's car as well. Of course you can well imagine that part of a ‘secret’ is going on a bus and looking back as you speed off thinking, thank goodness my mother isn’t coming! Why does she always look weepy when I board a bus? And it is even better to be sitting next to your BEST friend with a haversack full of food that you never get to eat at home!

BUT I guess from a kid’s perspective, you do need to worry about these lady Librarians . . . they are not as stern as those who get left behind in the library telling you that you still owe $5.50 on that book which was late, which you never really got to read anyway. I got to sit next to the older one. She looked a bit hip in that ‘dry as a bones’ . . . didn’t anyone tell her that you don’t wear that type of gear when you go swamping! The other one with the blond hair was a bit of a cutey . . . it would be great to have a mum like her!

Anyway we headed off and did the normal carry one in a bus . . . windows up and down, trying out to see if the back door actually opened, giving the driver lots of noise . . . good job he didn’t go on about the usual tourist jargon on your route to your destination. And yes, we got there . . . Charles Darwin Walk . . . a creek full of yabbies, skinks, dragonflies, mud glorious mud, bush tucker food, waterfalls, fresh swamp water, hills that took for ever to climb, and yes you’ve got it, we emerged with painted faces, gumboots full of water and two an half hours of ‘full on’ information overload on the best swamps in the world at our back yard.

That guy, Mike, knew more about swamps than I could have believed. He tried getting us to learn the Latin words for bush specimens but I thought it sounded like we were in some foreign country forgetting how to speak English!

The bush Ranger was a lady called Janelle. She talked about her people and ancestries and showed us how to cut large bark out of trees and swing a club, throw a spear and spin a boomerang. I liked what she had to say about her country and how her people knew better than us in how to care for the environment.

Would I do it again? . . . I sure would - even if we had to go with the librarians again!