Month: July 2021

Reminder of a change to the Heysen Trail in the former Bundaleer Forest.

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We remind walkers that, as previously announced, there have been a series of changes to the Heysen Trail in the vicinity of Curnows Hut and the former Bundaleer Forest.

In the ‘Heysen Trail reopens on Saturday May 1st 2021‘ news item, we referred to a number of  re-routes along the trail.

One of those, Item 3 Bundaleer, advised a change of the route in April 2021 to follow the Bundaleer Greenway. That re-route considerably lengthened the trail.

On 30 June 2021 we updated the news item to say that the Department of Environment and Water had reversed that re-route.

As a result the original trail between Curnows Hut and New Campbell Hill has been reinstated.

This is a significant change to the trail between Curnows Hut and Raeville. That walk, shown as Section 35 of the Heysen Trail Walk Selector, returns to 20 kms.

Any reference to the change of the trail to follow the Bundaleer Greenway was removed from our website Re-route page in June.

August edition of the Trailwalker

The upcoming August edition of the Trailwalker magazine, contains an article ‘Heysen Trail Route News’.

The article on page 7 includes an item headed ‘Bundaleer Forest’. The item describes the April 2021 change to follow the Greenway.

That article was written prior to the 30 June reinstatement of the original route.

In order to eliminate any confusion, we confirm that the Heysen Trail again follows the route as shown on the Heysen Trail Mapsheet 5A & the Northern Guidebook Map 1.4.

That is also the route shown on the Heysen Trail GPX file 16/2/2021 v4.0 and the corresponding version of the Heysen Trail Interactive Map.

Vale Cliff Walsh

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Cliff – Change Agent

Cliff will not be well known to most Friends Members, however he played a pivotal role in the organisation’s resurgence in the early 2000s.

He realised the financial survival of the Friends depended on left over grant money that accrued interest, in the days when investments did that. And that was not very much. At that time, the Friends’ council dealt with the entire management process and Cliff thought that streamlining the various processes, using the committee structure, would benefit the organisation. Consequently, subcommittees of the Friends, i.e., Walking, Membership and Marketing, Financial and Trail Maintenance could focus on their tasks, improving efficiency. This, plus a dynamic council, could concentrate on increasing membership, revitalising the walking programme and generating yearly surpluses that could be churned back into the Trail though the Maintenance Committee. As a result, this lead to a massive increase in membership, doubling in 2 years, and to some extent, the End 2 End programme.

Apart from his association with the Friends, he was the economics professor at the University of South Australia, economics advisor to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, introducing him to Grange, amongst his various achievements. Our condolences to his family and friends.

Tributes

“Sharp, focused, and unstoppable. Great Council member, and always there when needed. Didn’t stop even when very ill. Formidable. Vale Cliff. Well remembered.”
Simon Cameron

“Great intellect – set the Friends on a path to create the large, successful organisation we have today. Vale Cliff.”
Robert Alcock