The “PBT” is the SUBW President’s Bludge Trip to the Kowmung River on the October long weekend. The first PBT was in 1974 and they have been held every October long weekend since. This year, club president, Chantal, organised the walk to Hatchers Hollow, a large grassy flat near the river and its junction with Red Cliff Creek. A dozen…
Q Station at Manly has the reputation of being one of Australia’s most haunted sites. From 1830s to 1984 the Quarantine station was used to process migrant ships suspected of carrying passengers and crew with contagious disease. This trip was attended by a variety of people from first timers to the very experienced. Many night…
Everyone turned up at Circular Quay (not a single piker!), and off we went by ferry across to Taronga Athol Wharf. On the way Scott pointed out Fort Denison and I explained that it had been built in the 1830s to keep out the Russians. Essi from Finland (Russia’s next door neighbour) found it interesting that the Russians would want to come here! Once at Athol Wharf we set off along the path to the HMAS Sydney memorial at Bradley’s Head. Here we…
First up, let me mention that Devils Pinch has eluded Sky and I on two previous occasions, so there was no way it was going to beat us this time. Warm & sunny weather was predicted for the weekend, and even though it was still pre-season apparently, there was no way I was going to waste it. I arrived…
I love the splendid isolation of the Blue Breaks. Rugged sandstone plateaus, intersected by deep, plunging gorges, and almost completely untouched by modern man. I’d argue that they are among the most remote, wild, isolated places on earth — that still allows glimpses over a major metropolis. While it…
Well, I guess I’ll start this trip report with a description of the dedication of the 9 participants who attended this walk. In order to arrive at our starting point we had to first make our way into the city to catch the 6.45am L90 to Palm Beach. We had the bus time aligned so that we could catch the 9am ferry across to Patonga. As I was having a particularly lucky week, I decided to inquire with the water taxi as to whether they would match the ferry price. My luck continued and we were able to speed across the water to Patonga ever so slightly earlier and surely faster. With such a huge effort required in such an early start and time spent travelling, I was somewhat amazed that there were very few people who piked last minute on this trip.
A last minute call out for weekend ideas saw us settle on Boars Head, an abseil I’d wanted to do for ages. We quickly gathered an enthusiastic group and converged at Scenic World on Sunday at 9:30am. A short drive up to the Devils Hole exit and then a hop, skip and a jump up the road to the start and we were off.
With some dropouts due to illness and misadventure, the walk was reduced to just the two of us, and it was easy to make a decision to walk to Pearl Beach instead of doubling back to Wondabyne as originally planned.
We had lunch looking out across a beautiful view, before walking the final distance to Cowan Station. We said our ‘goodbyes’ and the half day participants were fortunate in having a very short wait for the train back to Sydney.
The gauntlet had been thrown down, and the challenge had been accepted by a handful of hardy souls — to go wet canyoning in the absolute depths of winter — and so Aussie FreezeFest was born. Julie had been trying for a while to get some interest in a local version of what has become an institution in the US, but for some reason people kept coming back with silly comments like “canyoning is a summer sport” and “you’ll all freeze to death”. Valid points,…