UNSW Bushwalking & Mountaineering Club

Newsletter - April 2000

Introduction

Well I hope that the university year is rocking along well for you all. Despite some hiccups ( as in this will be the first direct mailout that you get) from our side with getting all the membership stuff done, we appear to have had a relatively successful start to the year, with a quite large number of trips being run. Of particular note was the Boree Log, held recently with over twenty participants, I believe that a great time was had by all (well most).

The easter break could provide a good time to get out into the bush, if you haven't already done so. The trips to Tasmania will have already headed off by the time you get this (well, probably), but there are a few mountain bike trips running (and you don't even need your own bike if you hire a club bike). You can also run your own trip, and get people to come along for by posting it to the club e-mail mailing list. So don't just sit there, get up and get out into the fantastic Australian outdoors.

Mail outs

If you have indicated that you are happy to receive this newsletter by e-mail, then this will be the only newsletter that you get by mail, and will include a membership card. Other newsletters will be posted on the website, and you will receive notification by e-mail when the next newsletter is ready.

If you have opted to get the newsletter posted to you, it will arrive in the mail sometime after it appears on the web (depending upon how many people we get to help with printing it out).

Mountain Bikes

As you may know, the club has purchased two rather funky Merida Gamma Ray mountain bikes. These can be hired out from Innes Cyclery at 222 Clarence St Sydney by club members. The deal is, first in first served, and you are in when you go into Innes and book the bike and pay the hiring fee. You will also need to put down a deposit on the day that you pick up the bike, which will be refunded on the safe return of the bike. Currently the hiring fee is $15 for a weekend, with $100 deposit (credit card deposits accepted). Contact Peter Kirievsky at pkir@cse.unsw.edu.au for more details.

My Brush With Death on Mount Kosciusko (or thereabouts)

As we five sleepy travellers sat devouring chocolate milkshakes on a sunny Friday morning in Goulburn, we had no idea of the incredible disasters that awaited us.

And when, scarcely more than an hour late, we rendezvous-ed with the seven remaining members of our party in Jindabyne, we still had absolutely no idea. So we all went swimming in Lake Jindabyne. What more could you ask for at the end of a hot and sweaty day's dozing? After munching and lunching and stuffing around, we finally hooned up to Charlotte's Pass, the start of our walk. I jumped out into the clear mountain air and saw the tremendous shadows that higgledy-piggledy granite boulders were throwing on the treeless slopes. Snowgums and lizards basked in the sun; the Snowy River coiled beneath us like a silver road. Our leader Marton had devised a terrific route which would take in Mount Townsend, Mount Kosciusko and Blue Lake; my mouth, eyes and nose watered at the prospect. When Ben, who had gone off to get film, turned up with a collapsible fishing rod (incredibly useful, as things turned out), we knew it was time to go; so we went.

Down the hill to the murmuring Snowy, already a big stream; across the river on stepping stones; across Club Lake Creek flowing with cool sweet water; and up through sunny meadows we went. There was only an hour or so till nightfall - a peach of a time of day! Some of the party clambered up a monumental tor; the land streamed away. We left the path and cut across to Club Lake; it was so beautiful that we all swore. Picture a small lake - maybe six times the size of an Olympic pool - set in the bottom of a bowl, where three sides of the bowl are formed of towering granite cliffs, tipped by the last rays of the sun, and the fourth side is open, an outlet stream flowing through herby flats - that's Club Lake. Everyone joked about the view. Oh, I was hoping to camp somewhere nice etc. We set up our tents on the flats. James and me enjoyed putting up our tent so much that we did it three times. Then in a moment of rare grace I drew on a lifetime of bushwalking experience to spill a billy of boiling water inside the newly-erected tent. I thought it was a disaster. Ha! It was a picnic!

There were six tents all up. It was dark and we sat outside cooking and eating. Everyone got on well - but what are such easy good spirits worth unless tried by adversity?

Buggered from years of no sleep, with a headache, I went to bed. How looking-forward-to-the-morning was I! But sunrise was a lot further away than I thought. At midnight I was awakened by a loud noise like a thunderclap; it was a gust of wind striking the tent. My poor old dome tent, how it shuddered under the onslaught of the wind! James and me woke up and held our palms against the flapping fabric to try and stop the poles from cracking. We sat and waited for the wind to abate. It didn't. In the occasional five- or ten-second lull we could hear it hissing across the grass like a bullet. Rain came too. Sometimes a peg would get torn up, or a corner of the fly would detach itself from the tent; and we'd have to scurry outside into the rain and make hurried repairs. There was no chance of sleep; it was like being on a boat in a storm. We couldn't believe it; it was ridiculous; it had to stop. We laughed and cursed. Sometimes there were voices and we'd peer out through the doorway and see some ghastly-looking human figure with a head-torch blundering around in a sea of rain moaning or shouting. Sean - a Canadian - ran up and down yelling 'My tent's exploded and I'm standing in the rain in Australia at four o'clock in the morning! This is totally INSANE!' People called from tent to tent and laughed. I yelled out 'Could yous all shut up, I'm trying to get some sleep here!' But I don't think anyone realised I was joking, as they actually did quieten down for a bit.

Dawn broke - somewhere or other - and the wind still raged. Water was coming into our tent because the fly was being blown hard against the inner layer. A couple of hours after sunrise the fly finally packed it in; it tore free from its moorings and got ready to take off. We ran outside, grabbed it, saw that the situation was hopeless, and decided to head back to the car. Marton, who was thinking the same thing, gave orders for withdrawal. Out of the six tents we had started with, only two were still functioning. Marton, Neil and Sean - and maybe one or two others - had spent the night lying outside in the rain.

Ben came into our tent with his fishing rod and hooked seven rainbow trout; but three were only tiddlers and he had to throw them back. Oh well, nothing's perfect.

It was raining and the mist - cloud, fog, whatever - was so thick you couldn't see more than five metres. People began appearing and packing up tents and things. Surprisingly, everyone was in good spirits. Noone had slept, everyone was cold and wet - and maybe homesick and frightened like in the Navy - yet we were all pretty happy.

It didn't take long for me and James to pack up our tent, as there was not much of it left, and after we were done we just stood around shivering. I saw a bit of rubbish go blowing down a gulley and raced after it, grateful for the chance to get moving. I chased it down the gulley, it blew out of sight, I kept walking, following the gulley, hoping to come up with it, and I walked a fair way down the gulley before finally giving in. So I turned around to follow the gulley back to the tents but somehow the gulley had disappeared. It was so misty. Wait a second - here's a gulley. But it looks different - maybe it's another gulley. Let's go over this way. Here's a gulley. Is it? Maybe it's not a gulley at all�

After a puzzling couple of minutes I found the right gulley and marched up to the tents, where everyone said I'd been gone an hour and they were worried about me. Worried, whatever for?

So we set off - in single file - sing out if you lose sight of the person in front of you - step by step, down to the river, over the river, up the other side and back to the cars.

That night - in bed back in Sydney - I slept a sweet twelve hours.

Brian Hawkins

Note: this trip was undertaken with the New South Wales University Bushwalking Club

The Boree Log

Once again the Boree Log has come and gone, so here, for posterity, is my short little account of it.

I dashed back home, about as straight after work as I could manage on a Friday afternoon, and quickly packed for the weekend down at Bungonia. As is somewhat usual for people who've been doing this stuff for a while we get a bit blaze about the whole getting ready thing, and so it was somewhat later than the original 7:00pm pick up time that I turned up to Uni to pick up some of the others (7:30pm to be precise). My companions for the drive down were Sean Richmond, Garreth Biegun and Ulrike Kloecker.

The drive down was uneventful, until we reached the turnoff from the highway. It was here that we met the other two cars, which had left one and a half hours before us. Obviously they had managed a long dinner at the Marulan Hungry Jack's (an Aussie version of Burger King for all the North Americans out there). We promptly headed off again for our final destination of Bungonia with the other two cars trailing behind. We arrived, found a suitable campsite, and I headed off to retrieve Niklas, Markus and Spencer from Goulburn train station.

But that was not the end of the night dear reader, for upon my return (12am in the morning) we bravely left the comforts of the campfire to wander down to the upper reaches of Bungonia creek. While we didn't manage to see any nocturnal wildlife on our trip down to the creek (I suspect they run away when they hear a group of 15 people approaching), we did get to experience a most magnificent night in the bush. Tom, Spencer and myself even managed to enjoy a bit of a midnight swim in one of the pools along the stream. After our walk, people gradually staggered away from the campfire and off to bed (sleeping bag?).

The awakening next morning was suitably relaxed. By about 11am we were ready to head off for a walk, but then a monitor walked in to camp and stole the show for a while. For those who don't know, a monitor is a kind of lizard with big pointy claws for climbing up trees (and many other features which distinguish it, but unfortunately I'm not a biologist, so I don't know what these are). This monitor likes to hang around the camping ground at Bungonia, and eat what scraps it can find. Today it had decided that Andrew Collin's two-burner stove looked like it might contain some tasty tidbits for a monitor. Well, the stove did, and allowed us to have a quite good gawk at it while it was feeding.

Finally we managed to head off out to the lookdown, and off down the white track to the junction of Bungonia Creek and the Shoalhaven River. There was a fair amount of water in the river, allowing us much fun while swimming in the nearby rapid. We also stopped for lunch at this point, and argued as to whether cheese can go with everything.

We headed up Bungonia Creek after lunch, following it along the lower sections, and under the blast debris zone from the quarry above until we ganed the start of the so called boulder choke. Here house sized boulders choke the entrance to Bungonia Gorge, and you have to climb over, around and under this three-dimensional maze to continue further up the creek. We all managed to make it through this section relatively unscathed.

Once you are through the boulder choke, you are into Bungonia gorge. With several hundred metres of cliff on either side, it truly is a sight to behold, particularily from the bottom. After spending some time at the bottom, one eventually finds the red track, which is the way back up to the top, and back to the camp. About an hour later we had a well earned rest at the top of the hill (about 500m higher than the bottom of the hill) and rollicked back into camp.

The night brought on many things, the arrival of another car load of club members, caving in Grill Cave and drinking and playing cards until 4am in the morning. Oh, and another beautiful night sleeping under the stars.

On Sunday we split up, with 5 of us (myself, Sean, Brian, Tom and Sophie) taking the liloing option, while the rest of the group mucked around climbing on the nearby cliffs. The drive out to the start of the liloing is very impressive, with the fire trail following the top of a very steep ridge, and fantastic views out to either side of the Shoalhaven River Gorge. We took the blue track down to the river, and then headed a few hundred metres upstream, so that we could catch another rapid. The first kilometre or so was absolutely fantastic, with lots of rapids, and plenty of water. Normally liloing in Australia involves plenty of bouncing over rocks, but this time it was clear sailing, with the only bumping coming from the lilo punching through the reaction waves in the rapid.

Then came the long straight slow section. On a good summers day this involves a gentle drift down a few hundred metres of river, but this time, in Autumn, with a fairly cold river, it was different. By the time we reached the next rapid or two, we were all quite cold, particularily Tom and Sean who were battling with some of the club's old and leaky lilos. So we stopped at the lunch rapid to eat and warm up. This is also the point at which I discovered the inedibility of soggy bread, hmm, note to self, bring more waterproof bags next time. We also found the time to shoot the lunchtime rapid several times, which was a lot of fun with the amount of water flowing through it on that day. Memorable moments were Sean's collision with the trees after his successful run down the rapid, my backflip in the big stopper while running the rapid luge style, and Tom surfing one of the holes in the rapid.

It was about this time, that we realised it was getting a bit late, and so we headed straight up the nearest ridge, and back to camp, rather than taking the usual white track back. The ridge had a knife-edge quality to it, and was a lovely end to the day's liloing. Back at the camp we packed up our gear and bundled into the cars to head home. As an appropriate end to the weekend, I stopped off at the Paragon Cafe in Goulburn, for a very enjoyable hamburger, milkshake and coffee.

Thanks to all those who came along and helped make this a very memorable weekend. We're looking forward to another one, maybe next session.

Daniel Marlay

Trips List

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Daniel Marlay, 14/4/2000