‘Glendale’ represents various things including
the maintenance depot for Namadgi NP and the start of the Brandy Flat fire
access trail, an interesting walk in the honeyeater season, say a month from
now. It is also a regularly-used orienteering spot, the picture here
showing, more or less, the scene last Sunday, complete with turquoise portable
facility. If you look carefully you can see champion orienteer
(Bushflyer) and keen birdwatcher Lachlan Dow trying not to be distracted by the
birdlife. Actually the birdlife shown does slightly exaggerate what was
on offer last weekend, in fact apart from the ‘tchonk-tchonk’ of
the ever-present WEH there was little about.
‘Glendale’ as a name encapsulates the
anglo-celtic affinities of the early settlers, ‘glen’ coming from
the Gaelic for a mountain valley and ‘dale’ from the Original
Teutonic for a valley - unless dale was used in the Middle English
sense of ‘a portion of land’. I suppose the name was taken
from some distant ‘Glendale’ by early graziers who were pushed to
this rather remote corner by the pre-emptive squatter holdings in the flatter
parts of the present ACT. Or perhaps the squatters used it for seasonal
grazing. There are a few signs of earlier livestocking in the form of old
fencing that can be found, surprisingly, in places now heavily timbered.
