Rachel Grindlay

Sydney had suffered through its wettest August in a million years, and the week leading up to the walk was day after day of grey skies and precipitation (153mm in Sydney). Yet, most of the time when I looked at the radar our walking area for the weekend wasn’t getting that much rain. The weekend itself was quite a good forecast, but seeing the downpours on Thursday and river levels rising I decided it was prudent to change my planned route. 4km of unknown walking along the Kowmung when the river was likely breaching its banks didn’t sound like the safest option.

The forecast had suggested that the rain would ease on Friday afternoon, so it was with some disappointment that KT and I drove through the mountains in the rain. We hunkered down in front of the fire at the pub in Oberon for as long as could, but eventually we had to bite the bullet and head out to Mt Werong for the night. We arrived to a cavalcade of emergency response vehicles basically blocking the road in front of the campground.

Given we’d driven through fog, drizzle and rain to get out there, part of me was hoping that the road was closed, and we would have to turn around and head home to our warm dry(ish!) houses. Fortunately (in retrospect), the police officer I spoke to assured me it was open, but reminded me the creeks would be up. The emergency vehicles eventually left later than evening.

The next morning dawned clear – and the 5 members of the party were all assembled on time at 7:30am. We drove two cars further out along the road, fortunately finding a non-boggy shoulder to park on. I was bit worried about the revised route I’d selected, as parts of it had been toasted in the 2019 fires. However, we ran in to little serious regrowth and made good time. So good that we were at Hatchers Hollow by 1:30pm (having had lunch on the ridge). Perhaps we could have started a little later… but you never know what the conditions are going to be!

Stephen had lowered our expectations for Hatchers Hollow – saying it had been pretty boggy when he was there a couple of years earlier. It was to my great delight that we popped out into a reasonably clear, grassy area that didn’t appear to be a swamp. Obviously with the amount of rain in the preceding week everything was a bit damp, but a 4 star campsite!

We set about setting up, the headed out to have a look at the Kowmung River.

I think we all had similar thoughts as we dropped over the small ridge which separates Hatchers Hollow from the river; “Good thing the route got changed!”. The Kowmung was pumping!

It was hard to tell how far about normal levels it was – but you could see trees that normally wouldn’t be in the flow at least half a metre under water, so I’d be guessing it was a least a metre higher than usual. We followed it down to Hatchers Creek and then retraced our steps upstream, and tried to keep going upstream but were bluffed out, so headed back to camp.

I was still keen to head upstream to see what conditions were where I’d wanted to walk – but even Redcliff Creek was flowing so strongly that crossing would have been a definite wet feet proposition. My motivation wasn’t that high if we were going to get wet, so instead we walked up the creek ostensibly to see Lower Redcliff Falls (Dunphy Map, not on the topo). We were eventually repulsed from that option as well by bluffs and scrub – and my review of the LiDAR didn’t really show any likely spots for the falls anyway.

Despite the wet wood we got a good campfire going and had a pleasant evening.

A relatively late start (8:30am!) the next morning had us retracing our route up Redcliff Creek and then climbing steeply, through some of the most vicious nettles I’ve encountered in some time, to the saddle on the Irrae Gower ridgeline.

From there the rest of the day was just ascending – just a question of how steep, how vegetated and how good the views were at any given moment. The scrub wasn’t particularly bad, other than a couple of hundred metres before the ridge swings from east-west to north-west. The best section was before it flattened out where it was rocky with limited trees so we had extensive views from Mt Colong and the Blue Breaks round to Mt Doris and then up the Kowmung River valley. A brilliant lunch spot in the sun to appreciate the Kanangra Wilderness.

There was an unpleasant section of thick wattle/eucalypt spiked with fallen trees that threatened to put our pace to <1km/hour, but pleasingly it didn’t last too long and we were soon back on open squelchy heath. I realised as we neared the road I didn’t know exactly where we left the car. Fortunately a couple of other party members had marked the spot so we turned in the right direction at the road, and just a couple of minutes later were back at the cars at the very civilised time of 2:30pm.

A great weekend in the bush, despite the apprehension leading up to it!