dog walking on the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail

Yesterday Penny walked along the lovely O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail above Warburton. As it says on the Upper Yarra Valley website,

Nestled above the floor of the Upper Yarra Valley, O’Shannassy Aqueduct Trail follows the historic open channelled O’Shannassy Aqueduct, meandering through pristine forest which has been protected for nearly 100 years for water harvesting. The trail, stretching 30km in its entirety, passes mature fern gullies, creeks and plantations and offers spectacular views of the valley below.

Needless to say, we didn't walk 30 kilometres. It's a flat, easy walk, because it runs alongside an open channel that presumably had to slope only slightly so it could deliver water to Melbourne in the past.



We've decided the best thing to do next time is to park a car at two access points so we don't have to retrace our steps.

It's an on-lead walk, unfortunately, but we took Penny off-lead so we could take this shot of what the walk looks like.



I've done a lot of travelling in my time, but I have to say this walk, right on my doorstep, is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to.

One thing that puzzles me, however, is that Penny will often be quite reluctant to walk along this trail. She lags behind until I turn back and then leads the way to the car, jumping in readily to head down the mountain. I've speculated that there is something scary about the surface she's walking on, though to the human eye it seems okay. I've wondered sometimes whether this is a land-slip area and Penny feels vibrations I'm not aware of. The landslip report says

Landslips are a fact of life in the Shire of Yarra Ranges and have occurred for thousands of years.

The types of landslips that occur in the Shire included falling boulders, debris flows, slow long term earth movements, small landslips up to the size of a residential block and large landslips involving whole hillsides. Some landslips move relatively frequently whereas others have not moved for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

Let's hope the ground stays steady underfoot for at least the next century!