by Owen - Fri 30/Nov/2001
Slept till about 7am, thwarting any (not-so-serious) plans for a
pre-breakfast exploration of Mickey Ck Gorge. As it turns out our energy
was wisely conserved. A short consultation with park staff at the ranger's
hut/kiosk helped to reaffirm our plans for a Mt Moffatt adventure tomorrow and
Sunday, and also produced some 'insider info' - a recommendation to explore a
particular, unsigned gorge - essentially the park staff sanctioned, even
encouraged us to go off the track!
Today's adventure also marked the debut of Andrew's canvas water-bag (right)
We filled this and various other bottles, and set out heavily laden, feeling with each passing minute more and more like the bushmen we aspired to be. Our first mission for the day was a return to the 'Moss Garden' where yesterday a cheeky (well, actually irritating) Pied Currawong, made bold by tourists' willingness to feed native wildlife, had explored Spurry's camera case and removed an 8MB memory card. Figuring the bird would have soon deemed this indigestible and discarded it, we decided it was worth searching for. Up the trail and into the secluded, mossy haven, and sure enough there was the memory card, gleaming Kodak yellow in the dappled sunlight.
The Moss Garden is an amazing spot, where water that fell on the ground as rain 10 000 years ago, having dripped its way through the deep sandstone deposits and hit a hard rock floor, drips out through the side of the high rock walls over one's head, creating a permanently moist environment - perfect for mosses, ferns etc. As I had yesterday, I held out my bottle to collect 800ml of 10 000 year old rain, which served us well on our journey. Today however, I refrained from swimming out into the pool formed by this water and an adjacent waterfall, as the arrival of a pair of English tourists ("that was a long walk for not much of a waterfall") ("ooh, we have jackdaws at home, they steal all the silvery things"), coupled with a desire to get on to the gorge, hastened our departure.
Cooled by the evaporation of ancient water off my shirt, we covered the 2km to the 'Art Gallery' eagerly. We were slightly disappointed to discover we weren't alone when we arrived, as we'd been looking forward to "Lunch at the Art Gallery". But this didn't diminish our enjoyment of the impressive display - mouth-blown ochre stencils, including composite images (two arms joined together to make the impression of a single, double-ended arm with a hand at each end), engravings of kangaroo and emu tracks, and most commonly and engraving of a vulvic image, all informed by suitably humble signage ("the significance of this image is not known"). duh!
From here we veered from the set-out path to follow the directions the ranger had given us to scramble down from the art gallery until we reached the creek, from where we could rock-hop upstream to explore our choice of gorges and side-gorges.
We soon found the creek, and the realisation that we had this magic spot to ourselves without the annoyance of other hikers wandering round the bend was too much to resist. Straight into the water we went. I can tell you now, lying on your back in a sun-warmed, crystal-clear flow of pure mountain spring-water, as the rapids tumble around you, is pure heaven. The ultimate cool-down after a 6km hike. We soon emerged to contentedly partake of our lunch, and before moving on we took great pleasure in dumping some heavy supplies in a safe spot, since we knew we'd be returning later.
And so upstream we went, along a clear, ankle-deep stream, which varied along the way to reveal a range of habitats for different creatures, including a number of jew-fish, perfectly visible at the bottom of their pools. The sandstone cliffs rose impressively on either side of us, as we were presented with one choice (which led us into Kamoloo Ck) and then another, to which we were directed by a sudden influx of cool, damp breeze (we had spent the last 15 minutes trudging up a dry section of creek bed and were keen for a change).
As we forked left into this dark, narrow canyon, the nature of our adventure changed from simple bushwalk to Canyoning Challenge!
The first obstacle was a pool taking up the width of the gorge (not much more than 2m wide) and slightly too long to jump over. To wade through would have been possible if either of us had been inclined to take our shoes off. Which we weren't. Luckily there were deposited nearby large river rocks which we rearranged to form stepping stones across the obstacle.
There were yet more pools, supporting life in this remote, deep gorge. There is so little direct sunlight here that frogs can be seen happily swimming around in the middle of the day. We saw the tusked frog and one other species with yellow, spotty legs and a dark-brown eye-stripe. [This was later discovered likely to be the Stony-Creek Frog (Litoria lesueuri)]
Over the 'tree-trunk balancing obstacle' (thank goodness for those early explorers) and still onwards. As time grew shorter our desire to carry on grew stronger. But by 3.15 we were feeling we would have to turn back soon and then the "snake obstacle" made up our minds - this was the third we'd seen today, and the second I'd just about stepped on. This one wheeled around aggressively, trying to bite my leg, but I leapt back just far enough in fear.
Going through the obstacles backwards had its own set of challenges, but after an hour we'd reached our lunch-spot with its dropped supplies, we re-packed and trudged the remaining 2 ' hours back to the car.
Bird highlights of the day included Nankeen Night-Heron (disturbed in the gorge), Forest Kingfisher (apparently nesting), Yellow-faced Honeyeater, a probable Wonga Pigeon, and a very definite Squatter Pigeon on the road out of the park.
PS: The canvas water-bag was a great success and we couldn't have done without it!
Day 4 (Campout) >>