Month: September 2022

The Longest Gully

| flynny101

17/09/22

Russ, Libby, Kylie and meeeeee

It’s kind of become a tradition that we do something for Russ’ birffdee.

Come to Bungonia, they said. It will be fun, they said.

Only coordinating every one this year was difficult so it got spread out over a coupe of days with Russ and Lib being the constant and the rest of us joining for a day.

Anywoo, I’m in for the Saturday shenanigans and rock on down Friday night just in time for a good old fashion curry cook up.

The camp ground at Bungonia is amazballz. If you are into that sort of thing

At some point during the night someone asked, so what are we doing tomorrow?

I don’t mind says Russ

It’s your birthday, you choose says us

Awwwww I don’t like decisioning, says Russ. But I’m not keen to put a wet wetsuit back on tomorrow. How about Long Gully,

Now I’ve never really given Long Gully much consideration because nobody really raves about it. But they are all worth doing once and anything is good in the right company. so we get some sleep, rise not so early and break camp at the crack of 8am. Or there abouts.

After an easy amble along the fire trail amid banter and giggles we head into the scrub to follow a ridge down into our gully
As far as gullies go it’s not jaw dropping beautiful but it’s not hideous either
It reminded me a little of Dione Dell without water. Walk a bit, nice abseil, walk a bit, repeat
Libertybell getting it done. I think this was the only bit where I got my feet wet

And soon we come to this amazing view over the Shoalhaven
And the big abseil was cool. Kylie on rope. You might be able to see Rus and Libby way down below

Russ had gone first. Called out Awwwwwwwww! and gave us the tip to put our rain jacket on. There wasn’t much spray off the falls but it was chilly

I have no idea if I have the order of the abseils photos right but you get the idea.

There was no anchor set up for this one and it looked like it could be scrambled. I contemplated scrambling but considering how slippery the rest of the canyon had been I opted to set up the fiddle stick. Good call. says Libby. it’s slippery as snot and not in the places that look snotty

and before you know it we are on the banks of the Shoalhaven basking in the glorious sun shine.

Our Gully out of screen to the right and the canyon that shall not be named coming in mid right

A lounge about, some lunch and more laughs and then it’s back up the hill.

It has similar if a bit more elevation than the Kanangra canyons but it’s a much easier grade. And in good company it goes fairly painlessly

All in all Long Gully might not be the best canyon but its a reasonable abseil trip, worth doing at least once especially in the company of some of the best adventure buddies going

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