Yet more Dunns Swamp

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!

 

 

Extreme postcodes: 2849

This one's extreme in terms of the extreme amount of fun that can be had exploring it!

I'm not quite sure whether anyone actually lives within the 2849 postcode area - it covers large areas of national park and state forest. It's north of Clarence (where the Zig Zag Railway used to be till it was burnt out in the big bushfire last year) and east of Newnes. It includes some of the places my Thursday bushwalking group has been happily expeditioning in for the last couple of years: Donkey Mountain and the Glow-Worm Tunnel for example.

This week's Thursday adventure, on the Newnes Plateau, was one of the very best, and postcode 2849 featured again. We headed out to the Blue Mountains, and on to the Bells Line of Road and Dargan. From there it was north along the dirt road (Old Bells Line of Road). We were armed with the relevant topographic maps and an excellent pamphlet ('Short Walks on the Newnes Plateau'), put together by the Colong Foundation for Wilderness: http://www.colongwilderness.org.au/files/pages/short-walks-on-newnes-plateau-15June2009.pdf  

The area is riddled with four wheel drive tracks, and navigation around them takes a bit of care. There are forestry plantations (and log trucks roaring around), there's a big ugly coal mine, there are lots of pegs and other markers indicating all kinds of exploitative and damaging intent. But, there are still areas of amazing natural beauty and fabulous, other-worldly views. Much of it is 'pagoda country', with lots of these so scenic and so climbable things. They're 250 million year old relics of eroded sandstone with ironstone banding, originating in a big river delta of the time.

We checked out four of the scenic short walks (at Bald Trig, Bungleboori Lookout, The Lost City, and Lurline Jack Lookout). We explored a little further around most of them, climbing lots of pagodas along the way. As requested by the Colong Foundation, we took care not to stand on the wafer thin edge bits, as this can damage them (and us, if we fell tens of metres down the cliffs below!)



Because of the fire last year it was all pretty open, and progress through the bush was far easier than it probably would normally be. A lot dirtier too though. We were soon covered in soot and looking like old fashioned coal miners!

We're not yet all pagoda'd out, so I imagine we'll be back in 2849 again before too long!