We all met up at Thornleigh Station and headed off along the Great North walk (GNW), which for the first km goes along suburban streets, so the first (and only) non-reptilian animal we saw on the GNW was somebody’s cat. Then it was into the Eloura Bushland reserve which then reaches a concrete fire access road which leads down to the upper reaches of Berowra Creek. There we…
This was always likely to be a slow trip, as seven is a large party for Claustral and we had some relatively inexperienced trip members, including our guest, an overseas academic with interests in conservation biology who had joined us at the last minute. As trip leader I was happy to go slowly, as the previous time I joined a small, fit group through Claustral it took seven hours and I was really exhausted by the end. The plan…
The start of a new Semester always sees an influx of new members to SUBW, so it’s good to do a beginners walk to welcome them to the wonderful world of bushwalking. And, although not intended, I also introduced them to the wonderful world of leeches! The walk was to Stanwell Park Gully and the Wodi Wodi Track, south of Sydney. This area…
13 of us all met up together at Central Station for the train to Leura. Kang had a close call as she was lured to the wrong platform by the transport app, and on this morning the app was wrong! So we all set off for the 2 hour train trip to Leura, noting the bat colony at Clyde and a couple of Kangaroos in the grounds of UWS at Kingswood, and these were the only wild creatures – bar one- that we saw on this walk. Vanessa, who…
On 14/2/15 we planned to do Castle Head and Malaita Wall, we did neither of these abseils today, but still all had a very good time. We met up at Scenic World at 9am. We were on location for the Mailaita Wall abseil and Chee had done Castle Head a few times. The group made a decision on the spot that Malaita Wall was a more appealing option at this time. We were…
This trip had it all. Sweltering heat, thunder, rain, cool mist, snakes, an allergic reaction, great canyons, campfires and lots of abseiling. But first and foremost, the risks and dangers of what we do was slammed home as soon as we got back to mobile phone coverage after the trip because there came the shock news that on this same weekend on another SUBW trip, Helen Smith, a long time SUBW member, fell while en route to a canyon and was badly injured. All our…
Some more good weather luck on this walk. Although rain had been forecast for the morning, in fact it had past over overnight so we had a clear day for the walk. Maddie and I arrived at Central, got the train there and collected Tony and his niece and nephew David and Suan. When we…
The weather forecast wasn’t looking too good in the days leading up to the walk, and the predicted conditions of ‘consistent rain all day’ turned out to be highly accurate. Two people dropped out, leaving four adventurous souls to join me at Wentworth Falls, unperturbed by my early morning SMS-warning to them that they should ‘expect to get wet’. As the…
Eight of us met at Medlow Bath on a perfect, sunny morning to explore Hat Hill Creek and it’s canyons, following Tom Brennan’s excellent track notes. After some messing about we headed down the hill at 10.10, reaching the creek about 15m later. A few minutes walking down a not-too-scrubby creek brought us to the first constriction, which starts with a slide into a short swim. The constriction…
After Saturday night dinner at the Royal Hotel in Oberon, we camped at the sparsely populated Boyd River Campground and set the alarm for Sunday 4.00am. It was 5.30 before we headed north along the Mount Thurat Firetrail. Across the Kanangra Ck fords, and up past a marker cairn onto Thurat Broad Ridge before we turned east and descended to our target gully. Dave Noble’s…