Just a brief report with thanks to the SUBW members who offered advice for our walk, and to those who came and made it a lovely weekend. We walked the classic Solitary traverse in the end, with a car shuffle that worked brilliantly thanks to our three drivers (Martin, Mark and Sean). We even…
Expected to be cloudy for the whole day according to the weather forecast, again they successfully fail to predict the weather, it was a bit of shade very early in the morning, the sky clear out once we arrive at springwood. As my aim was to organized a big beginner canyoning trip to let more firsttimers experience the charm of bluemountain exclusive features, it was pity that almost half group of people dropped out before the trip with whatever their reasons, 4 other members contacted me in the morning to quit because they missed the train. I personally…
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…