On my way up the bush track from home to the station yesterday, I found a man with a clipboard prodding at the stone steps. With long hair tied back, khaki clothes and trekking boots, he might have been a ranger, but he didn’t have the badges. I struck up a conversation and learnt that he was surveying the track to determine what might be done to restore it. Aside from a couple of missing steps, I wondered aloud what there was to restore. That remark started a half hour lecture.
The heritage track, he told me animatedly, was a beautiful example of 1930s stone masonry, but had worn over the years. Some steps might last another 100 years, but some had already started to crumble. Stone slices placed vertically to frame the steps had fallen away or disappeared entirely. A ramp would have to be redone in concrete to meet modern requirements, but that would ruin the look so he’d either overlay it with more natural crushed rock or flatten it and add more steps. The stones used had originally been cut from the rock in the immediate area, which would no longer get past environmental groups so it would have to be flown in from sites of dismantled buildings of the same era.
In half an hour I learnt a lot more than I had known about the history of our local area and more about stone masonry. I’m sure that I’ll enjoy walking that track a lot more in the future.