Like many others who have had the pleasure of living in California, I am a huge aficionado of hiking. When I lived in Los Angeles, I spent many afternoons on the wide and scenic trails of Griffith and Topanga Canyon State Parks. I enjoyed the exercise and a landscape that didn't involve strip malls or freeways. With that being said, I was quite looking forward to doing more than a few hikes (or bushwalks, as they're known here) in Australia. Luckily, Penrith--the city where I'm currently residing--is very close to the Blue Mountains National Park. Any day I choose, I can simply hop on the train and three stops later, I'm in the bush.
Yesterday, I fancied a bit of a exercise, so I rode the train to Glenbrook station with a rigorous bushwalk in mind. I had to go solo, which is usually a faux pas in the hiker's handbook. But, I figured that I am fairly experienced, and as long as I stick to the beaten track, what's the worst that could go wrong? Oh how mistaken I was.
It all started with my pre-bushwalk bathroom break. A fifteen minute walk from Glenbrook railway station is the entrance to the Blue Mountains National Park, where one can find tourist information, taps to fill water bottles and conveniently located toilets. Though I didn't need to go that bad, I knew this would be a better place to do my business than in the bush. I reluctantly stepped into the public toilet and winced. To my surprise, it was not the expected stench that shocked me, but rather, the hundreds of flies and mosquitoes buzzing around in the stall. I flailed my arms around me to deter the bugs from biting me on my bum, as I tried to balance myself over the toilet. Then, a dreadful thought entered my mind: "I forgot the bug spray." As soon as I could, I hurried out of the toilet stall and into a humid day in the woods. I would be fooling myself, if I didn't heed the danger of hungry mosquitoes in these conditions, but I wasn't about to turn back now. I begrudgingly found solace in the fact that I was wearing long pants, and I set out onto the trail.
That day, I chose to trek the trail to Red Hands Cave, in an effort to further explore the aboriginal history of this country. Located within the Blue Mountains Range, Red Hands Cave is an area of rocks where evidence of aboriginal habitation can be found. The walls are painted with red stencils and handprints of all sizes, and they are said to be anywhere from 500 to 1600 years old--hundreds of years older than the country itself. I chose Red Hands Cave not only for its unique artifacts, but also because it seemed to be on a beaten trail, not too deep into the bush. I followed the signs down the causeway, until I reached a sign pointing to a track headed straight into a thick forest. As I proceeded further and further down that track, I noticed that a lot of the plants were overgrown, blocking parts of the trail. I was sure I was going the right way, but it really felt like no one had hiked this trail for quite some time. This was not the first time that I had wished for a machete while hiking, but I kept going and hoping for the path to clear.
Now I was even deeper in the bush, and every few steps, I felt the silk of a spider's web clinging to my ankles, arms and face. I hate this feeling almost as much as I hate the sound of a insect's wings buzzing in my ear. However, I was determined to reach my destination, so I kept swatting and smacking the air around me. After about 10 frustrating minutes of waving my arms like a madwoman, I resolved to picking up a long stick and using it as my web-avoiding device. It did both the tricks of keeping the webs off me and the bugs away from me...well, at least, for a little while.
As I proceeded further along this dwindling excuse for a track, the plants and bugs just seemed to take over. I cannot deny that the scenery was beautiful, but I hardly noticed it with all the goosebumps developing on my body. I quickly came to grips with the fact that if something were to happen to me out here, no one would even hear me scream. There could be a poisonous snake or spider on the route, and I would have nowhere to run and no one to rescue me... And then my nightmare came true. Just as I was turning a corner of the track and wiping spider-silk off my left arm, to my right, I caught a glimpse of a spider the size of my mobile phone. I actually screamed and leapt back about 3 feet. Eventually, I stopped hyperventilating and desperately tried to convince myself to be logical about the situation. So, I peered around the same corner to try and identify this horrendous creature.
It had brown and yellow-striped spindly legs with a black and white-striped body. It was the biggest spider I have ever seen, besides a tarantula. It was sitting calmly on its web spun between the branches of several plants. "How can it be so calm," I thought, "when I'm clearly losing my wits?" It had to be poisonous, and it was planning its attack on me. Thankfully, it hadn't spun its web across the trail, but rather, on the side of it, so somehow, I convinced myself that I should go on and finish the hike. I slowly and cautiously crept around this spider, holding my breath the entire time. Once I was about a metre away from it, I let out some air and anxiously continued my journey.
I found myself not being able to relax after seeing the spider, and I knew that if there was one of them, then there were bound to be many more. I kept my eyes peeled at all angles, as I swatted frantically with my stick. If someone was videotaping me on this hike, then the tape would have resulted in the humorous, yet pathetic depiction of a psycho with a tic. "Got to keep going," I thought. "Got to face your fear." But I couldn't do it. The final straw, which made me turn back, was a tall plant crawling with evil-looking ants. I turned around and rapidly, but excruciatingly carefully, headed out of the bush. On my way out, I was tempted to take a photo of the spider that nearly gave me a heart-attack, but to be absolutely truthful, I was just too damn scared. I finally reached the clearing, after what seemed like the longest hour of my life, and I hiked up the hill back to Glenbrook station, sweaty and defeated.
On the train home, I decided that I would go back to attempt the trail again, so that I could, at long last, see Red Hands Cave. The next time, I would definitely bring a companion along--someone who could walk in front of me and bear the brunt of the spiderwebs before I got to the them. As soon as I got back to the house, I rushed up to my laptop to look up the bloodcurdling spider that hindered my hike earlier that day. It turns out the poor bugger was just a harmless Golden Orb Weaving Spider, which is apparently reluctant to bite and doesn't have that bad of a bite anyways. Certainly not venomous. But here's a look at one to help you decide what you would have done if you had crossed paths with it:
So although I acted rather cowardly, I do agree with the hiker's handbook in saying that one should never attempt a bushwalk alone. I won't do it again, and I don't recommend it to others. If I ever do make it to Red Hands Cave, I'll make sure to document my brave journey and capture some good photos of all the creepy crawlies along the way.
