Bound for South Australia - 8: Aroona camping

 

I spent a happy two nights at the rather idyllic Aroona campsite, near the Heysen Range in the Flinders Ranges. Tent sites were spacious, the toilets were clean and odourless, and each site had its own tap supplying spring water. Emus came wandering through, with their teenage families, and the night sky was of course magnificent.

Once more unto the......... Kanangra-Boyd!

Four years ago I  had my first Kanangra-Boyd experience. I was there for three days, a mixture of leisurely day walks, convenient car-camping at Boyd River, and an extremely arduous day walk down to  the Kowmung River and back.

It was time to explore the area a bit further, so when some good bushwalking friends suggested a little Easter long weekend full-pack walk there, I was ready to join them.


I wasn't quite ready for the arduousness of the venture though. Maybe I'd just forgotten what these big adventures can be like. But gee it was a big one.

And a rewarding one too. That which doesn't kill you.....

Off we went, down past the Dance Floor Cave and up onto the Plateau. From there you look down several hundred metres below the cliffs of Kanangra Walls, to Kanangra Creek below and to the north. But we're headed east a few kilometres to Crafts Wall, and then sharp right, past the Pinnacles, and down a ridge to a hoped-for waterside campsite at Gingra Creek.

It's all a bit further than we'd expected though. It's about to get dark, so we camp high up in a flat spot on the ridge. Completely waterless, but beautifully remote and quiet and rather comfortable. We had emergency water supplies, and survived the night well.

The next day's walk was one of the most uncomfortable ones I can remember, though memory is rarely a good guide in these matters. We bashed our way down that Gingra Creek, and by hook or by crook, got to the other end, near its junction with the Kowmung, and magically found another idyllic private campsite, this time with water and all!

Day three was almost as bad. Foregoing even a glimpse of the sacred Kowmung River, we commenced a big long slog up a very long ridge, 900 metres of ascent plus a few hundred more because of all the extra downs and ups caused by 'Sixth Top', 'Fifth Top', 'Fourth Top', etc that you find yourself climbing over. With the 18kg full packs on our backs, it was calculated to be a Grade 5+ by our Club's grading system, as was the previous day's effort.

Nearly out now.

And here's the finish line.

Kanangra skies

I spent the Easter long weekend in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park, doing an unexpectedly gruelling (but ultimately satisfying) 3-day bushwalk. More on that in subsequent posts, but here are some night sky shots from the Boyd River camping area.

We amazingly had an Easter of excellent weather, both bushwalking-wise, and astronomy-wise. And with reports of a possible nuclear winter to come, it was very much time to put my wide
angle lens to good use on the clear dark sky.

An exposure of a few seconds (first picture) yields the brighter stars (Southern Cross, Pointers etc) plus a hint of Milky Way. Click on the picture to see it a bit better.

Give it a full minute, and enhance it a little, and we get a very bright Milky Way indeed, though you have to work a little to distinguish that Cross. You see the Coalsack dark nebula well. It's otherwise known as the head of the Emu constellation - the enormous dark-patch constellation of indigenous astronomy. More of that in a few weeks time hopefully, when it's fully visible, nuclear winters permitting.







Here are my fellow campers, enjoying a nice warm campfire.

Swamps ain't swamps

In fact some swamps are amazingly beautiful places.

A group of us spent the weekend at Dunns Swamp, and what a fine swamp it is! It's a few kilometres east of Rylestone, a couple of hundred kilometres drive north west of Sydney, and it's on the western extremity of the Wollemi National Park.


Don't tell anyone, but Dunns Swamp has just about the finest, best appointed, clean and scenic camping area known to God or the National Parks service. There are dozens of very large areas for tents. There are lots of clean toilets with generous toilet paper supplies even. There's swimming to be done in the artificially widened Cudgegong River. There's firewood provided, with fireplaces and picnic tables galore. And there are great little easy walks to follow through the 'pagoda' rock formations. All for just $6 per person per night.

We were able to use Dunns Swamp as a base from which to do some bigger exploratory bushwalks too. We did some big pagoda scrambling expeditions, and we conquered the previously unconquered (by us) Mt Touwouwan and Sheridan Hill. And in the evenings, when not dodging lightning bolts and torrential downpours, we enjoyed our campfire, our camp food (in my case the usual dried cardboard gourmet Frankenbushwalker food), plus appropriate warming beverages!