Date: 13+14/12/2025
Trip leader: Ashley Burke
Photos: by Ashley, by Ashley
Attendees
Abseiling and camping
Ashley Burke
Kejia (Villa) Zhou
Allison Xu
Fabian Hugel
Shriya Salligram
Shuren (Cherry) Wang
Ryan Clarke
Isabel Noakes
Fangyi (Julie) He
Camping Only
Paul Moulston
Neha Moulston
Grace Huang
Hugo Marchant
Yupeng (Harry) Lu
Junee Lee
Turned up Independently
Jo Boyd
Joe Brischetto
Roger Lembit
Robert Hynes
Peggy Huang
Stephen Zaman
Julian and Zac Zaman (children)
Photos
Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18smAHR-IqwfW5t4k59DgW2qm9r4Bwe7G?usp=drive_link
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BnWqXVTaF/
Trip Report
The Christmas Dinner Walk is an annual SUBW tradition dating back to the 1970s. I have been attending this trip almost every year since the late 1980s. This year’s Christmas Dinner Walk began as one of the wettest that I can remember, but this changed on Sunday, which was a glorious summer morning, allowing us to enjoy everything that the Christmas Dinner Walk is all about.
The walk is quite short, taking a little more than an hour even with a large group, and is normally done in the afternoon. This left the morning free for another activity. In recent years I have taken the opportunity to include a beginners’ introductory abseiling session in the morning, to give people who have never abseiled before the opportunity to give it a go. The skill of abseiling is useful for the many canyoning trips that SUBW will be arranging over the long summer ahead. It is also a good skill for gaining confidence with use of rope and other equipment as a way of safely negotiating difficult terrain. And of course the main reason to go abseiling is that is a fun thing to do!
Due to a few late cancellations, we ended up with 9 people for the abseiling, which is far more manageable than the 17 who I had at one point! The group met at Glenbrook station at 07:30, most having come by train from Central. We piled into 2 cars for the remainder of the trip up to Mt York. We found a nice area of small cliffs at Mt York for the abseiling session. At a very small cliff of just a few metres height there was an instruction session led by me, with a safety briefing and all the tips and techniques for safely descending a rope on a cliff with a bottom belayer. Everyone got a turn at the practise abseil. Then we moved to a larger cliff, about 10-12 metres in height, with an overhang, for the main abseil. This I would top belay. Everyone had a turn abseiling and everyone loved the exciting experience of confronting their fears, overcoming their trepidation, and walking backwards over a cliff, only to safely glide down to the bottom, enjoying a few metres of free space on the overhung section. There were a few anxious moments when one or two people lost their footing, something that is quite common when abseiling for the first time. It’s still perfectly safe when this happens, just scary for the person abseiling!
At about midday it was time to pack up the abseiling ropes and head back to the cars. There were picnic tables at the car park, and so this is where we had a picnic lunch.
The plan was to meet some others at Blackheath at 1:30- 2pm. So we left Mt York just after 1pm and drove to the meeting point at Blackheath. There we met Paul and Neha, Grace and Hugo, as well as Harry and Junee. Fortunately we now had plenty of car spaces for everyone. So after piling into a convoy of 5 cars, 15 of us headed down to Megalong for the walk into camp.
It became very clear that the weather was changing. What was a fine morning had completely clouded over and storm clouds gathered. During our walk into camp the heavens opened and we were inundated with a downpour of rain, complete with thunder and lightning. In places the track became a flowing drain. The group of 15 kept walking, best to get down into the trees and off the high ground as soon as possible.
By about 4pm the rain had stopped and we were at camp getting our tents set up. Several students needed help pitching tents, fortunately the rain held off while this was happening. A few of us went for a swim in the river, but pretty soon the rain started again. This time there was no heavy downpour, but steady light rain that persisted throughout the evening and into the night.
Upon our arrival at camp, Roger and Bean were already there, Jo and Joe turned up not long after us, and later Peggy, Stephen and their children Julian and Zac arrived. So in the end it was a group of 23 people including the two children attending the Christmas Dinner Walk this year.
Because of the persistent rain, we built up a nice warm fire, thanks to the firewood collected earlier by Roger and Bean. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent around the fire in the rain, making the most of it. Despite the rain, many of us stayed up late and enjoyed good conversation as we roasted ourselves by the fire, turning around frequently so that one side got hot thanks to the fire and the other side got cold and wet thanks to the rain.
We even managed a rendition of the Wild West Show later in the evening. By about 10:30pm, most had retired to the relative dry of our tents.
We woke to a glorious summer’s morning and clear blue skies. The rain had stopped in the early hours of the morning, around 3am. This meant we could enjoy what we had come here for, a hot summer’s day relaxing by the river. Only one person, Harry, left early, before any of us had got up, and walked out separately.
The rest of us enjoyed the morning by the river. Everything rapidly dried out. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast around the campfire, then moved down to the river which was flowing strongly due to the recent rain. It was an enormous amount of fun playing in the bubbling water, the swift current, the natural swimming pool, natural water slide, and natural spa. For some of the international students this was their first time swimming in a river.
Slowly we began packing up, and after an early lunch we were ready to leave by about 12:30. Joe and Jo and Grace and Hugo had walked out earlier. Peggy, Stephen and the children remained behind for a couple more hours. The rest of us began the walk out by about 12:40 and were back at the cars by about 2pm on what was becoming quite a hot and windy day.
In the nearly 40 years that I have been attending this walk, much has changed. But fortunately much about the Christmas Dinner Walk is as it has always been. The campsite and the river are largely unchanged except for seasonal variations such as where the sand is and how tall the grass is. And things like where the bull ants are, how many flies there are, and whether the cicadas are as loud as previous years. And of course, there is always a new group of people, often international students, that provides the welcome variations from year to year. But there are also the things that stay the same that are reassuring, and this makes the tradition of the Christmas Dinner Walk worth doing, and something to value, and return to, year after year.
So we’ll see you there next year, same place, same time.
Ashley Burke