Rachel Grindlay

With a long forced shut-down over Christmas we had opportunity both before and after Christmas for extended canyoning trips. Our pre-Christmas jaunt was a 4-day/3-night adventure in the Wollangambe Wilderness.

Our first day was relatively short as we had skipped doing any canyons en route to maximise our time further into the trip. So some ridges, creek crossings and more ridges later we were somewhat surprised to come upon the canyon about 400m earlier than expected in our creek.

Given the time of day, and unknown camping options downstream we decided to camp in a small overhang we found. The next morning we were straight into the canyon. Fortunately it was a warm day as we were swimming almost from the get-go.

After the canyon ended we continued downstream, in what became an increasingly frustrating creek. Plenty of low river gums, boulders and general scrub. We were both “over” the creek walking and had been trying to find somewhere to camp for a while – with no options apparent. Eventually we came across a small flat dirt patch which we could probably landscape to fit 2 people. It was the best thing we’d seen in ages… we were going to camp, but (fortunately) Tom said he’d just go on 5 minutes and see if there was anything else. I was pleasantly surprised when we returned and said to keep going. We ended up camping on a lovely sandy beach at the junction of two major creeks.

The next morning we had our only excursion of the trip without full packs. We visited a small canyon which had 2 interesting sections and a beautiful abseil.

Then it was back to more lovely creek walking.

And a slog up a scrubby pass which seemed to go on forever. “This canyon better be good” I grumbled as we tripped over yet more vines in our ascent.

The first views into it were good. In fact it was very good. So good we only got out just on sunset!

With darkness rapidly descending and knowing our issues the previous day of finding a campsite we settled on a large flattish boulder in the middle of the creek. A solid 12 hour day under our belts.

The last day we had planned on another canyon but given we had a long way to get back to the cars we decided to go with the “easy” option and just walk out. With half a day of creek-bashing and the other half ridge-bashing (in a thunderstorm) we were pretty happy to see the cars at 5:30pm. We were both destroyed and definitely in need of a 4 day recovery period before our next multi-day trip.