Organ Pipes National Park walk and GPS trial

Was a sunny but cool day today, so decided to take the new GPS out for a spin and get some exercise at the same time. The Organ Pipes is a natural rock formation quite close to Melbourne; the exit is literally off the Calder Freeway near Keilor.  They were formed millions of years ago when lava cooled slowly and cracked into quite regular columns. Erosion exposed them and they are now on the side of a hill on a river bend. And yes, they really do look like organ pipes.

Before I left home I knew there were at least a few interesting things to see whilst visiting this Park; the Pipes themselves plus another interesting formation called the Rosette Rock. I wanted to get their exact GPS locations (latitude and longitude) and put them into the GPS before I left. I’m still searching for a list on the web of such ‘waypoints’, but no luck so far. So went to Google Earth, zoomed in…and using some of the external data (layers) was easily able to find the Pipes and the Rock.

I used gpsbabel to convert their Google Earth co-ordinates to Garmin format, uploaded to the GPS and ta da, they both appeared in the GPS and on its Map.

Anyway I did this very pleasant walk just fine and the pre-loaded values were very accurate; for example the GPS beeped – a proximity alert – when I stopped at the Organ Pipes viewing area itself.

I also logged the walk in the GPS so it could be seen in 3D back in Google Earth; which confirmed what my legs had told me: down a steep hill, along a flat river valley and back up the steep hill.

One final comment on this National Park. When I first visited it in the early 1970s it was very barren. Just bare grassy hills and weeds. Over the following 30+ years a group of volunteers have done a sterling job clearing out the weeds and planting native trees and shrubs. The result is nothing sort of amazing as the ‘before’ photos ot the place show. Barren to living bush again.  Well done!