When I was a teenager, I had a beautiful skewbald pinto pony (14 hands high, and that's brown and white, if you don't know the horsey lingo). We also had this massive chestnut gelding Dad would ride - he took up riding because he wanted to make sure I was okay I think, and it seemed like a fun thing to do. We used to ride it through the Iron Bark basin, bushland at Point Addis in Victoria's south west. We'd bash away along narrow tracks with branches slapping our face and up and over the cliff that's now fenced off to the public. If you did this now, they'd arrest you. There's very few places to ride a horse now. But every time I do this 45 minute circuit I think of Dad and I on the horses. 

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The grass trees are like trolls advancing through the forest, though there's a real risk of die off due to cinnamon fungus. They throw off big spear like flowers, which are hard to capture on the camera with the upright trees around them. Here's one that's been broken but you can see the seed pod up close. 


![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/riverflows/EogQDrXJjmR56iiwp9wvKNqFRrj4yUiXuZdwk1vL7DSFfYbH2kvehUDHXaCiuhgeK1e.png)


In Australia there's always something flowering - no long, colourless winter like Europe's north. Soon the yellow wattles will be catching the golden hour and taking our breath away, but for now there's just these pale, butter yellow ones, and pink heather. 

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The place is named for the ironbarks, characterized by dark, deeply furrowed bark, which is super resistant to insects and even fire. The timber's valued for it's strength and it can make its way into furniture too.  


![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/riverflows/EogMuf22ibtTWCAPMSixheEzJtS4E9J7ukRyYH8qnFECQYdLZJ43bro5Gpe4v9ruFnP.png)


The beautiful red and yellow ochre of the basin gives the cliffs their distinctive red colour in the distance, but traditionally it was used by indigenous people for ceremony. However the area also held a paint mine, and they'd use the ochre to make a red paint for early trains until they found a synthetic alternative. 


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Someone's been building cubby houses down here, or perhaps at attempt at Aboriginal dwellings. I'm not sure if it is kids or an outdoor group. I get a little annoyed to see they've removed moss to attempt a kind of insulation. I don't believe you should disturb the natural environment that much, even at play. Sticks are one thing of course, but moss in quite another. Yet, I guess I used to do that kind of thing as a kid. Moss is cool to make wild beds from. 


![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/riverflows/EokcgiLJikNeN3gyMyp4UF8ji4rtUKXKsVNJRtR5k5dSG4yd4SFkZATn7ifByrPAPpG.png)

I walk back along the road, glimpsing views of the beach and the headland where I've spent so much of my life. It's very much infused with *spirit*. I see deer prints on the roadside - it's incongrous here, as one expects kangaroos, but there are a family of deer known to be in these parts and I always look for the white stag, though I've only seen him once.

[//]:# (!worldmappin -38.37420 lat 144.24506 long Ironbark basin walk  d3scr)


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# `With Love,` 


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