Rachel Grindlay

As much as I enjoy exploratory canyoning sometimes it’s nice just to go and do a canyon that you know is going to be good! Many canyons of the Bungleboori have that exploratory feel to them with no tracks once you get off the old firetrail/main ridge, and given it was 7 years since my only previous visit to Luna Park it was almost like doing a new canyon.

Scatters Canyon

Swim/jump in Scatters Canyon (though we climbed around it)

Views from the ridge above Luna Park

James on our first (probably unnecessary) abseil

James about to jump

James trying to get his descender over the lip of this tricky abseil

There were some interesting patterns/currents in the water following a week of heavy rain.

James checking if the ropes reach! Fortunately for Tom his 20m recommendation was adequate…

Beautiful Dingo Creek

Explorers Brook had been one of those canyons that had been on our agenda every summer for as long as I had been canyoning. Several years ago I’d been on a trip where we only got through some of the upper sections (unclear what we were aiming to achieve that day?), and Tom had separately visited some of the upper creek. We were scheduled to do Explorers Brook on a club trip last summer but due to illness and injury had missed out.

I was quite surprised when Tom suggested Explorers Brook for the coming weekend. I’d been angling to do it for the last couple of months and he’d never seemed that enthusiastic, citing the need for a car shuffle as a major impediment. Yet, despite having no capacity for a car shuffle, and Tom still recovering from a few injuries he’d picked up on our post-Christmas Coorongooba trip it seemed that it was the go. Fortunately these days we frequently do overnight canyoning trips, so preparation comes easily, despite little planning time it was easy to throw together our gear on Friday night.

The car shuffle concerned me, and I suggested we were better off dealing with it on Saturday morning then on Sunday afternoon. Tom was relaxed; we would just be able to hitch a ride on Bells Line of Road… and if not it was only a 6km walk to Mt Banks! We then discovered a friend was canyoning in the area on Sunday and on Saturday morning while en route to the canyon we tried to make arrangements for him to relocate our car. North Richmond is a common meeting point for canyoners and when we arrived there on Saturday a large group from our club were also there, preparing to do Bowens Creek South. Some quick thinking and we managed to sort out a car shuffle on the spot. Sweet! Except that if for some reason we had to bail out from the trip early on the first day (potential given Tom’s injuries) then our car was nowhere near by.

It was windy and not overly warm when we left the Mt Banks car park. We decided to go in from the North, off track, rather than taking the southern fire trail. We were hoping the ridge would be reasonably easy going, and the scrub wasn’t too bad. As we got onto our minor ridge where we were planning to drop into a side tributary we were surprised to find a large rock arrow (1m+ long) pointing down the ridge – a far more elaborate marker than the usual cairns. Someone had clearly spent a lot of time constructing it, and for what purpose?

A couple of dodgy scrambles and we found ourselves in the side tributary. We had morning tea in a pleasant overhang before finding ourselves in Explorers Brook. I recognised some of the earlier sections from my trip back in 2008, but soon we were into unknown territory.

The creek was pleasant and very canyoniferous without really being canyon. We had put our wetsuits on when we hit the first swim, but they weren’t necessary for much of the morning’s walking. It was a warm day and we probably would have been better off leaving them off until we stopped at the main drop in the creek for lunch. We’d seen photos of parties abseiling on the true right, as well as down the main drop so knew we’d have options for our approach. Tom found a sling on the true left so we decided to head down that way.

From the bottom of that short abseil it seemed a long way to the bottom! I was concerned our 20m ropes might not reach and we might need to change tack and head down the right-hand side. Tom threw our second rope, while leaving our first in place, to see if it reached. We couldn’t see the bottom. Hmm. I didn’t really fancy testing it as it would be a long prussic back up. And Tom still having a hand issue from a slip a few weeks earlier was unlikely to want to prussic either.

Fortunately on the second throw I could see the rope hit the water (not much to spare), so we rigged from where we were. The top of the waterfall was full of beautiful arches of varying sizes – though difficult from our position to photograph.

(Photo: Tom doing his best Smiffy impression below the main fall)

Once that drop was done we de-harnessed as we were under the impression that was the only drop requiring abseiling. We were somewhat surprised to almost immediately get to another drop! There was an old seatbelt tape in place, but not long enough to get all the way down (or at least not unless you were into dodgy jumping onto rock!). In the end we ended up abseiling, though I’m sure there would have been alternatives had we wanted to invest time looking.

From there we had a 2m water jump and swim, some beautiful canyon sections. And before we knew it we were at the junction with King Georges Brook which we had visited last year.

Downstream from the junction there was lots of boulder scrambling and we were glad to reach a camp cave about 6:45pm.

Fortunately lots of eucalypts from the cliffs above had dropped branches so we were had a large pile of suitable firewood fairly quickly. We were both stuffed and were in bed as soon as we’d made our way through cheese, port, soup, dinner and hot drinks… so 10pm! The glow worms were outstanding though I struggled to keep my eyes open to appreciate them.

I slept badly, continually waking up and being unable to believe that the sky was not even beginning to lighten. The best sleep I had was from about 6:15am till 7am when I woke with a start as we normally plan to be up at 6:30am. We were away from camp just after 8:30am.

It took us an hour to get to the junction with Carmathen Brook – passing some beautiful cascades on the way. The pool and rock shelves at the junction were lovely – somewhere you’d love to spend a hot day lazing about – if it wasn’t so far from everywhere!

The going up Carmathen Brook was much faster than Explorers Brook. We were able to stay on the bank a reasonable amount of the time. We had set off with wetsuits on but we’d encountered very few wades, let along swims. The zip on my wetsuit was rubbing on my back, along with feeling like I was in a sweat suit, so at morning tea I dispensed with the wetsuit. Of course, shortly after morning tea we encountered our first canyon section and swim, but I managed to bypass this by climbing high onto a shelf on the right. We met a few more wades/swims but it was another warm day and I decided the wetsuit could stay in my pack.

At the end of one long swim there was a slightly tricky climb up a waterfall. Tom with his broken body was struggling to get any traction but fortunately I managed to get up with the help of a low foothold from Tom. After I hauled Tom’s pack up Tom just managed to get himself up. More pleasant creek interspersed with canyon sections followed. We were at the bottom of the Claustral exit at 1:40pm – we expected to see some parties completing Claustral or Ranon but no one came past while we were eating lunch.

From there it was just the three hours to exit via the now established new Claustral exit. Every time I do the Claustral exit I am surprised at how difficult it is, and how few incidents there are. We met a party of three, a father and 2 teenagers, at the Camel’s Hump where we chatted for a few minutes. Tom was initially asked if he was Dave Noble, and then I was accused of being very familiar, before I let them in on who Tom was. A celebrity in the canyoning community 😉

My legs were running out of steam by the time we left Claustral Brook and headed up the final climb to the car. Tom, on the other hand, had found his second wind, our roles reversed from the rest of the weekend. He steamed on ahead while I struggled to keep plodding on. After enjoying the view on the large rocky outcrop before the road we signed the logbook before arriving at the cars around 5:20pm. The bag of chips in the car didn’t last long and soon we were on our way home, Explorers Brook finally ticked after too many years.

When we got home we found this guy in our sink. Not sure what sort of spider?

After accommodating flight schedules, family lunches and the like we were able to convene in Lithgow mid-afternoon on Boxing Day. From there we made our way to the start of our 6 day trip into the Wollemi Wilderness. Clearly I didn’t think anything interesting happened in the first 24 hours as I took no photos (perhaps preserving an almost flat camera battery?). We just walked into a campsite in the late afternoon of Boxing Day. It was a cool and slightly drizzly evening and I ended up wearing almost all the clothes I’d taken with me!

The next morning we headed down a creek that a few of us had previously visited, before getting to some unexplored territory. I seemed to still be getting over the cold I’d developed earlier in the week and I opted for some quality nap time on side of the river while the the others went off to explore. They returned for lunch which I had to prepare since Tom had jarred his right hand badly in the canyon and could barely lift up pieces of cheese to put on his crackers! Given Tom’s hand and my lethargy we headed straight for camp while the others explored a second creek in the afternoon.

Here’s camp for night 2 before the others arrive.

Fortunately Tom’s hand improved enough overnight that he thought he could keep going. And I had regained some energy; so our full contingent set out to explore on the morning of day 3. We had some good views from the top of our pass over to our target creek.

This canyon proved to be one of the better ones of the trip. And as the weather was still overcast my photos came out ok!

After lunch we explored another nearby creek which had an interesting cave at the top. Unfortunately the creek had no canyon in it so we were back to camp fairly early.

From there various endeavours were undertaken. Tom and I looked up another creek which didn’t have any canyon. Simon tried to find a better camp cave (unsuccessful). Mel and Rich went for a walk up the major creek, and Sue relaxed. The forecast had been for a reasonable amount of rain so we were keen for a camp cave but the one we had found was not great. There was nicer camping at the nearby junction but in the end we opted for the cave in case of the rain. (Of course it didn’t end up raining.)

The next day we went over a pass into a perhaps too-highly anticipated canyon. It had two deep abseils which were lovely but it was over all too quickly. The weather also cleared up and we had brilliant sunshine for the rest of the trip – unfortunately this meant many of my photos were completely blown-out, hence not many.

We then explored a nearby creek which turned out to be a pass.

Then we headed up a nearby tributary, which we managed to reverse (some more easily than others). It proved the value of low expectations as I think we enjoyed it a bit more than the anticipated canyon from the morning.

Simon and Rich ready to do battle in the jungle!

From there we dumped packs at a junction and headed up the major creek with our day packs to explore a couple more tributaries.

Here’s Tom boulder scrambling in the major creek.

The first creek we managed to reverse. It was quite interesting, with a tunnel section near the start. Tom unfortunately jarred his ankle when he slipped on a slippery climb-up. So to add to his hand injury he now had a stuffed ankle.

Finally we explored our 5th (?) creek of the day. This one we couldn’t reverse but we managed to climb onto the ridge nearby. We descended a low quality canyon which ended  with a long abseil back to the creek. From there we headed back to camp after a pretty full day.

The next day we headed back upstream to explore a couple more creeks. They both yielded some canyon – the first one reasonable quality but short.

The second one lower quality but a little longer.

Having met our objectives for this section of the trip we then had to start thinking about how we were going to get back to the cars. After a leisurely lunch we headed up on to the tops in the heat of the day and then dropped into a different creek system.

We descended a tributary that Tom & Rich had partially explored on an earlier trip.

We then headed up the major creek in the hope of finding a campsite. Camping was not great but given the plan for the next couple of days we settled on using another less than ideal camp cave. Sue, Simon, Mel and Rich set off to do a canyon which Tom, Rich & I had done on a previous trip while Tom (stuffed ankle) and I (chafing) contented ourselves with a late afternoon finish.

Our final day saw the party split for the morning activities. The weak and wounded headed straight up a pass and directly for home, while the keen people headed downstream. We reconvened several hours later at a cave, us having had a leisurely morning of extra coffees, while the keen people tackled obstacles and scrub. We had lunch before we all descended a final creek, which turned out to have some canyon sections, on our way back to the cars.

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.