Rachel Grindlay

The forecast was about as good as you could get for canyoning – three days of ‘sunny’ with temperatures in the mid-high 20s. I had commitments for the Sunday so this seemed the perfect opportunity for a Fri/Sat trip. It had been a while since we’d been into the Bungleboori – I was a bit surprised to see it had been 4 years since our last trip. That said, it had been 15 years since we did the route we had planned for this weekend! Looking back on the photos from the 2009 trip there were some stark differences. I had a day pack and Tom was loaded up with a full overnight pack. It’s been a while since that’s been the weight distribution for our trips!

I had done Luna Park significantly more recently than Tom – 2016 – whereas he hadn’t been there since our 2009 trip. When James & I did it in 2016 we were pretty efficient – but that wasn’t the way Tom & I were rolling this time round. Initially we missed an early ridge so had to do some back-tracking, then couldn’t decide whether we were going exploring (and if we were, were we taking full packs, small packs, or just doing an out and back.. ). It hadn’t even occurred to me that it was well after lunchtime even though I’d been ravenous for quite a while. It was only when Tom said it was 1:20pm that I realised there was good reason that I was hungry! We enjoyed lunch in the shade of a pagoda with great views over the Bungleboori before finally dropping into Luna Park about 3pm.

We had the usual array of short abseils, jumps and climb downs before hitting the deeper part of the canyon. I had a strong memory of what the anchor was going to look like for the trickiest abseil start … and a sharp corner, with a pool leading into it were not it! Anyway, with the rope anchor set-up there seemed to be a less stretch than previously, and we both made it down with the usual device grating over the edge.

Towards the bottom we strung together a couple of drops which I think we’d done separately on previous trips. There weren’t obvious intermediate anchors, but given we had sufficient rope to combine the drops we didn’t look too hard.

Luckily for us there was a convenient sandbank in place to camp on once we were spat out onto the Bungleboori. When I’d been here in 2016 there was no sand just rocks so it obviously comes and goes, as we camped in the same spot on a sandbank in 2009.

Just as we arrived at camp a black swan floated upstream – almost like it had been waiting for us to arrive so it would be part of the backdrop. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black swan in the greater Blue Mountains bush – it seemed quite out of place.

It’s been a while since I’ve slept out with glow worms for company along the walls and the stars over head. I would have liked to watch them for longer but I was asleep almost as soon as I lay down.

The next morning we got away reasonably early as we weren’t sure if our intended route would go and wanted to leave time for alternatives. Fortunately our first choice route did go and in less than 45 minutes from leaving camp we we were dropping into Dead Tree Canyon.

Given the floods and fires of recent years Tom was musing over how many dead trees would be in the canyon given it was chock full of them before. We weren’t disappointed – almost immediately climbing down a number of dead trees.

By coincidence it was almost 20 years to the day since Tom’s first visit to Dead Tree Canyon.

We enjoyed having our abseiling skills tested with numerous tricky starts – generally from low-slung logs into narrow Vs which then opened up into overhung sections.

It turned out I’d never done anything with my photos from our 2009 trip, so I thought I’d include a few here (there wasn’t anything worthy of inclusion from Luna Park!) for comparisons.

We were happy to warm up in the sun on the Bungleboori for morning tea before heading back to the rest of our gear that we’d left where we camped. The black swan was still hanging about in the pool upstream of our camp and wasn’t too happy about us heading that way. We tried to steer clear of it – maybe it had a nest in the vicinity?

Generally the section of the Bungleboori up to Hailstorm Retreat felt fairly quick – there’s lots of sections where you can walk on the bank. But, despite feeling quick it took us well over an hour. So those sections where we got stuck in boulder mazes or thigh deep in quicksand must have eaten up the time. We had lunch and then it was time to ascend Hailstorm Retreat. We were pretty happy it had clouded over by this stage – the heat from the direct sun makes a huge difference.

I feel like I’m slightly mentally scarred walking out Waratah Ridge – it always seems to go on and on, and even once you hit the Hole in the Wall fire trail you’ve still got the best part of 4km to go. It was no different on this trips. My feet were over it shortly after we hit the main track (where there were a couple of tents pitched, though no sign of the occupants).

We made it back to the car to find our tyre with a slow leak was very saggy. Tom insisted it was fine to drive into Lithgow on it (I’ll resist commenting on that) – so a slow trip into the servo to pump it up was a bit of a downer to finish the trip. It seemed only fitting that dinner was pizza in Richmond as it so often has been after Bungleboori trips in the past.