Dot Hoffmann
Earlier in the year we lived in Hong Kong for five months. The University of Science and Technology, where Errol taught, is located a half hour train ride on the eastern sea coast of Kowloon’s Sai Kung Peninsular. About six thousand students and another thousand teaching staff lived on campus. The campus occupies the terraced sea-face of a mountain of 600 meters (a little higher than Boronia peak) with the slope to the sea being at 35- 45 degrees. By the time you reach the top of the University and the road connecting the settlements along the coastline of this peninsular there is still more than two thirds of the mountain to walk up. The trails were flanked by familiar-looking trees. Many were acacias and eucalyptus relatives of our Grampians trees. The most common looked like blackwood and the acacias flowered right through the spring time. Just like our acacias there were fluffy blossoms of all hues and sizes; the seed pods had familiar shapes too. The terrain was jungle-like with lots of vines threading their way over anything in its way. This made familiar trees look quite different.
There were a couple of villages that could easily be accessed by walking paths near the university, but both the beach side and the mountain were part of countryside walking tracks which cover most of the area known as Hong Kong.
As well as this surprising amount of open space, a series of country parks with the highest Peak of 1000 meters are connected by narrow corridors and a major walking trail named after the English Governor who conceived the idea, the 105 km long MacLehose Trail. This trail stays mainly in the mountains ,often comes down to the bays for a cooling interlude and continues from as far east as you can to the very end of the New Territories in the west of Hong Kong. Each island too has many walking trails. Good information is available in tourist places about the trails. Most of the people I saw walking however were Chinese out for a day of walking and fun.
Private housing is too costly and unjustifiable on the steep slopes of Hong Kong. Much of the housing is publicly owned and swamps and mountains are terraced to provide accommodation for the significant growth experienced. However the area which has pudding-form shaped mountains provides 7500 hectares of country park on the Sai Kung Peninsular alone.
My walks into the trails were accessed by short bus rides. These took me to a choice of several trail heads. The paths were far too civilized for a Grampians bushwalker. However the interpretive work done in the Park is excellent. The cultural sites were exceptionally interesting. I learned as much about the culture of the indigenous settlers of Sai Kung as I could. I was often warned by university staff of the dangers of walking alone in the Parks. There is the reputation that illegal mainland Chinese immigrants live in the wild and attack lonely walkers. Fortunately I was able to explore on my own, feeling quite safe and not coming to any harm. I have a feeling the people who warned me there, are the same kind of people who warn me about walking on my own here. Just the same I never carried valuables and took great note of directions.
Not only as I walked, but from our apartment windows too, we were able to observe such a lot of birds and butterflies. There was nothing familiar about any of these except for the small egret who nested just below our bedroom window. Any time of day we were able to watch Black Kites use the updraft from sea to circular waterfall cliff just below the nest from which their young set up an insistent call for food from 5am later in the spring. I had no idea how noisy young hungry Black Kites could be.
Web-based walking clubs abound in Hong Kong. Most of the people involved were senior citizens. Whenever I could I walked close to these groups. They walked all times of the week, took their walking very seriously and had great walking gear. Most walks were advertised on the web, and were planned to finish with a meal at a dim sum place. So I got to taste food at all sorts of small roadside cooking places! A few tables strategically placed between the trailhead and the bus stop would really be a lovely addition to the Grampians. No wait a minute; do I really want a bus to arrive every forty minutes from Stawell as well? Maybe not. Now that I am back and continuing to enjoy and revel in my rambles, I reflect how fortunate I was to have a national park to walk in at any time, just like at home.