A morning walk this drizzly winter means muddied boots from boggy paddocks, and a putrid dog.
Still, every walk is worth it, for body and soul.
We are lucky to have generous neighbours, meaning we can walk freely for a good hour across private property.
We usually follow the local creek, now flowing freely, although we notice it carries more silt than sand these days as rural holdings are broken up.
Wetter seasons in recent years mean more wildlife. The variety of birds and their number seem to have expanded a lot. We see multiple new wombat holes and small mobs of kangaroos and wallabies, night travellers, it seems, from the western slopes of Mount Sugarloaf away in the distance.
But there are, too, the intruders. The silted creek bed is haven to weeds, while bramble and lantana thrive on the banks. As ever, there are rabbit scratchings.
Foxes are there too, their scent sending our dog into tailspins. The foxes seem more audacious, some say it's the young males pushed out of a long-standing den by older males shoring up their rank.
Away from the creek and its smells are the paddocks, dams with lilies and ducks, pastureland, cows chewing away, casting the odd glance at the dog.
The walk home through the paddocks is uphill, and good for the lungs.
When the sun is out, you shed a layer of clothing and you stop and look to the south, in awe as sunlight ricochets off the sandstone cliffs of the Watagans, relict of the mighty Mooki Thrust, as geologists call it, the seismic shattering of the Hunter from its coastline 250 million years ago.
We are lucky to have access to private lands on which to walk. Most people don't. It could have been otherwise. Welcome to Country ceremonies are a reminder of the history of Indigenous people sharing their lands.
The violent dispossession of Aboriginal Australia by the British in the decades following 1788 turned the idea of communal land on its head.
The British stole every square inch and labelled it, unsurprisingly, Crown Land. Unlike back in Britain where there were rights to travel across private land, property rights in Australia were recast as exclusive to the owner, trespassers to be prosecuted, and Crown Land was disposed accordingly.
Our beaches were an exception. So too were vast forestry lands, reserved originally for wood harvesting.
Then, after the world-wide rise of the national parks movement in the 1870s, many state forests across Australia have been turned into national parks. The Barrington Tops, Mount Sugarloaf and the Watagans are some local examples.
But governments provide pathetically for the maintenance of our national parks. It is two years this week since access to the Watagans National Park from Heaton Road (the only access road from Cessnock and Kurri Kurri) was closed due to landslips during the big wet.
Cessnock Council, on its road closures web page, says National Parks has responsibility. But National Parks tells me it is a council matter.
My guess is neither party has the dough to rebuild the road.
It's another example of the neglect of the regions in NSW and Australia more generally.
Contrast the $20 million coughed up by the federal government to fix the dunnies at Leichhardt Oval and the $2.5 million, again from the feds, to upgrade to the amenities at nearby Henson Park.
It's only a coincidence both these council-run suburban grounds are in the electorate of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, no?
Governments in Australia, apart from local councils, have plenty of money. The issue is how they choose to spend it.
Public lands away from the state capitals where folk can take a walk are low priority, unlike grassy hills at footy fields in an inner-city electorate where locals sip craft beer on a Saturday arvo and celebrate a working-class history few were ever part of.
