Participants: Rachel Brennan, Tom Brennan, Andrew Glover, Bethany Hoye
The trip had been locked in for a few weeks, much to the disappointment of a few potential starters that couldn't make the date. The weather forecast was looking good…. and then the weekend before Tom has a fall that bruises his ribs and stuffs one of his fingers. I strain a hip flexor on the Thursday night. Hmmm…. will we actually make it out? The physio thinks I'll be fine, though I'm not sure she really has a true image of what I might be doing for the weekend.
Anyhow, given the difficulty in pulling a trip like this together, it is not lightly blown off, so the four starters leave Sydney on Friday night. We make it to Barcoo Swamp around 10:30pm and quickly set up camp aiming to get up at 6:30am. "How are we going to know when it is 6:30am", I say to Tom. "It'll be light"….
So at 6:55pm we wake up. I have never seen Tom get ready so quickly! Leaving the car at the head of the Galah fire trail we set off on our adventure. The walk in was relatively uneventful. Tom's navigation got us into Closet Canyon as planned. Tom manages to delicately manoeuvre himself around the pool at the bottom of the first abseil, and then pull the rest of us across. The water avoidance was short lived as there was a swim almost immediately. The last time we'd done the canyon the boys had somehow bridged over the swim, but looking at it we couldn't really work out how they'd done it. So it was a chilly dip for all of us! Getting into the pool was awkward and being the bunny that had to work out the best technique, I got the first of many skin gratings for the weekend.
We did some dodgy scrambling on the left hand side of the creek to avoid abseiling until we got to the final big drop. Tom was worried we might be short of rope as we had a 39m and a 53m and the drop was supposedly 40m. I got to go first and find out whether there was an issue… Fortunately the drop was more like 36m so we had a fair bit to spare.
We walked down Rocky Creek for a little bit before stopping for lunch at 12:30pm. We were running slightly slower than planned but with over 7 hours of daylight left, surely we had plenty of time?
Next step was to find a pass out of Rocky Creek next to Thunderstorm. This was relatively straightforward and we were soon at the top of the cliffs. We bashed our way up to the knoll on the top where we briefly checked out some nice caves. Concerned about time we tried to pick up the pace as we bashed our way through thick scrub down the ridge towards the creek. We failed to pick up the gully Tom was aiming for (in retrospect it was so flat we walked through it without realising) but soon were at the top of a cliff. We abseiled in - by now it was 3:30pm. The goal was to be at the start of the canyon section by 4pm - we might still make it!
We walked down the very pleasant creek for what seemed like a long time. Fortunately it was pretty easy going, narrow and quite pretty. Finally we got to a hole in a boulder jumble in the middle of an open section of creek. This turned out to be the top of the first abseil - we had finally reached the canyon! (4:30pm by this stage) The first drop was only 3m and we were down quickly. Glover then demonstrated how to avoid a chest deep wade by using his pack for extra bridging leverage. Even the shorties in the group managed to use the technique to avoid getting wet. Yet again the water avoidance was of only short-term benefit as there was a jump into deep water immediately afterwards. It was only after Glover and Tom had jumped that I noticed there was a sling available. Bethany and I jumped anyway - I was pretty pleased I managed to lower myself enough to only end up chest deep in the water instead of the complete dunking Bethany got.
Another short abseil followed - it started a trend of very awkward starts. We then did another jump into a shallow pool. It was only about waist deep but with a very sandy bottom there were no problems. Glover and I reached the top of another drop which looked like there was potential to scramble around the sides but it was quite dodgy. We then noticed a chockstone wedged up to the right with slings around it so abseiled off that. The abseil was very awkward as there was nothing to put your feet on and difficult to stop yourself swinging into the wall. Once down there was a squeeze through a boulder pile up which required taking packs off to get through.
Bethany found an old key wallet in this section of canyon, I don't know how long it had been there for but the leather was rotted and the keys were completely rusted. Imagine how gutted the owner would have been to get out and not have their keys.
The longest abseil of the canyon followed off logs, with yet another awkward start! This abseil narrowed as you descended so if you weren't careful you could end up wedged half way down. Tom managed to jam himself between the narrow walls, unable to move his right hand because it was holding the rope. I didn't see it as I was rigging the next, slightly easier, abseil. Due to the awkwardness of the abseils, and the long ropes, which were unnecessary for the short drops, we weren't particularly efficient on the abseils.
From here there was a dark tunnel section which Bethany was loath to go into without a torch since it was so dark. It took a while for the eyes to adjust but eventually you could make out the route through without extra light. Once out of the dark section there was a squeeze under a boulder and suddenly you were out of the canyon, almost as suddenly as the drop in at the beginning.
Given it was close to 6pm we were keen to find the camp cave and get set up for the night. We were a little surprised to find ourselves above another abseil a short way down the creek. Just to keep with the trend this was another awkward start. Crikey, with its series of 'tricky abseils', had nothing on the collection we had been through in Contradiction. The enthusiasm for the swim across the pool at the bottom of the abseil was palpable.
Fortunately, not long after this we found a passable camp cave and soon had a fire going and cheese and crackers doing the rounds. Bethany and Glover decided that despite the cave they were going to set up their tent. The one-pole Megamid made it look like the circus had come to town. However, the glowworms were the main event. They were spectacular - lining both sides of the creek for metres and metres both vertically and horizontally.
Tom said there was no need for an alarm as all we had to do the next day was walk out, so no great rush. We didn't get up till 8am and by the time we'd had breakfast, packed up etc we weren't properly on our way until 10:30am. The rest of the creek was hard work and eventually we traversed out on the left hand ridge to meet Rocky Creek. Rocky didn't prove much easier and it took us almost 2 hours to cover the 2km upstream to Galah Canyon. We had lunch in an overhang. Hundreds of mosquitos also had lunch in our overhang.
Tom led us out the Galah exit. We were so relieved when we finally reached the junction of the turn off to Closet and the Galah fire trail. A final round of Bethany's delicious brownies sustained me for the 11.5 minute walk from there back to the car (good thing it was less than the promised 15 minutes). We had the $10 Sunday roast at the Richmond pub on the way home - a good end to a great adventure weekend.