Great Uncle George canyon fell out of favour for a bit.
A change of land ownership saw the start of the Ingar fire trail locked up but also restricted access for canyoners to the quickest way in.
The alternate route in was a scrub bash that made an average quality canyon barely worth the effort.
But then top bloke and local legend, Blue Philips stepped up to the plate, contacted the owner and, convinced the him to trial allowing canyoners access across his land.
The conditions are explained by Blue
“ Permission this time from the owner (now sometime resident), Warren, stipulation is: keep as far left as you can, away from the house/environs, once you walk around the locked gate/fence, head down near the two abandoned caravans to the lower gate, close it behind you, locate first abseil (slings on tree), and off you go. We’re effectively ‘on trial’, so as long as no-one’s a flog and spoils our access privileges, GUG is back on, via the easiest and simplest ingress route. If you see someone else acting suspiciously, call them out, the owner has endured a lot of negative stuff over the years; bushrock theft, building material theft, motorcycle hoons hooning, fires, drugs, you name it. Us canyoners need to be as pure as the driven snow:-)”
Anyhoo we thought why not take advantage of Blues hard work.
Retracing the entry I’d used years ago with Julie and the Cooks, it took no time to get to the start.
And before long we were at the exit point that cuts back up to the Areoplane Hills picnic area.
We stop for lunch then scramble up onto the ridge. From there it’s an easy stroll up the ridge, made easier from a hazard reduction burn earlier in the year that has cleared out the scrub
GUG might not be the most exiting canyon but finding a patch of wilderness close to suburbia has a vibe all of its own.
When Surveyor General Mitchell was making his map of NSW he asked his surveyors to, where possible, use the traditional place names.
(When he wasn’t naming stuff after Macquarie, that is)
His map had the northern branch of this creek system marked as Bungleboori Creek. Clew’s 1930’s Military Survey had the branchs labled “Bungleboori 9 mile” and “Bungleboori 12 mile”. They later became known as Bungleboori North and Bungleboori South.
This suggests it was a mistake when the Geograffic Naming Board renamed the Northern Branch to the rather less evocative “Dingo” Creek.
While tame camp dogs were called Dinggu by the Dharug people of the upper mountains, and thats where we get the term Dingo, wild dogs would have been more commonly called Warragal by the Dharug and Wiradjuri.
The Gundungurra may have used that term too. So why Dingo Creek?
Anyhoo that is nether here nor there as we are headed for the southern branch, now officially “The” Bungleboori creek.
This was a very last mintue decision. After a couple of hectic weeks we opted for (what we thought woud be) a slightly less committing trip.
I hadn’t done Arthurs before, nor Hailstorm Retreat for that matter, and Kylie hadn’t done many canyons in this section of the Bungleboori at all.
We had a quick puruse the the maps the night before and decided that was the plan.
the bright eyed anticipation of adventure
The road out to Waratah ridge is rough as guts at the moment. It’s the roughest I’ve seen it since the 2002 fires. If you are heading out that way a car with high clearance is recommended.
the wild flowers though…
We head up the usual track but soon spear off on a side trail.
I was expecting an old 4WD trail out to views and this matched my expectation though the trail looked more well used than I thought it would be.
And there I was blindly following the trail down into a gully when Kylie called, Hey this isn’t right. We should still be on a ridge.
She has an uncanny ability to map out a route and picture it in her head.
We stop to look at the map. This was our first time using lidar overlays, courtesy of Rob’s Maps, they are an awesome tool. Thanks Rob H for creating such a wonderful resource.
Yep! we shoud be on the ridge and, if anything, dropping off the other side. We debate heading back up the trail or dive off and traverse across.
If we traverse the topoline aroud the top of that gully it’s only 150m across and half the elevation. Argue I.
Gadget reluctantly agrees, loath to dive into the scrub this early on what is sure to be a scrub bash.
But I’m the the scrub master, usually. Little did I know.
Back on course we follow the ridge until near the end then opted to descend a creek line. I’d read the gully wasn’t too bad….
Let’s just say we should have got out of the creek line early and looked for a nose. The scrub along the creek was horrendous. Anyone who has been on one of my infamous scrubbashes knows that’s a big call.
It was a relief when we popped out of the bushes onto a very pretty section of Paddys…. I mean the Bungleboori.
then, steadfastly avoiding anything that slightly resembled a creek line, we pop up the nose on the other side and with a couple of short scrambles break the first major cliff line suprisingly easily. We traverse down to cross a creek line then, again easily up the nose to break through the upper cliff even easier. Its rare I find the up 10x easier than the down whch just goes to show how bad the scrub in the creek was.
We are now at the base of the Mini Arthurs.
We have a decision. Gadget had mapped out a route that skirted around the outcrops and dropped into the creek closer to where Arthurs was meant to drop into a canyon however that meant missing weaving through the maze of the Arthurs themselves and potentially missing the upper section.
We weave up through the Arthurs and into another scrubby creek.
This one isn’t as scrubby as the previous (yet) and we soon reach a scramble into a very tight slot. Its jammed full of sticks but I clear them out as I work my way in. 1 very tight squeeze and it opens back up. Just downstream it drops into another short squeeze to what looks to be an abseil but this is so jammed full of debris we were forced to retreat up and around the next side gully.
And here’s where the scrub decided to step up a notch or ten.
On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad was it?
to use a 30 year old meme
Holy cutty spikie grabby shit fight batman.
At times I couldn’t even tell if we were in the creek or on the bank or what. Even heading up the slope onto what should have been a spur between two creek lines offered no relief.
Finally we came to a spot where the creek bagan to drop through boulders. and a slot of sorts openned before us.
It’s not much to look at so far.
but just downstream we are surprised
The creek twists down through a pretty waterfall into a stunning chamber.
With care the pools could be avoided but by this stage Kylie had no cares left to give and opted to frolick in all of them with reckless abandon.
And just like that it opens up.
Kylie didn’t agree with me but I did say if that canyon section was in the middle of Claustral it would be the nicest 20metres of Claustral. Maybe the 5hrs of dense scrub bashing had me delusional but certainly not delutional enough to ever want to come back. Arthurs is defiately a oncer.
OK, “best bit of Claustral” is probaby a stretch. Maybe Grand. If it was in the middle of Grand it would be the best 20 meters of Grand.
But we still had more dense scrub to bash through down to the junction with the ‘Boori. then a further engery zapping boulder hop down to where we would camp for the night.
We got the tarp set up just as the storm hit. And hit it did.
As my mate Russ would say it pissed it down.
Interestingly the creek didn’t rise that much with the storm but come morning we watched it rise about 50mm in 20min while we ate breakfast. The lag effects of water running down tributaries and soaking through the ground was cool to see.
We were pretty beat up from the previous day (and hadn’t done any big trips recently so a little off our canyoning game fitness) The temperture had also dropped over night, I think we had forgotten how cold the ground stayed at this time of year and only bringing our summer kit was optimistic. So we opted to have a lazy start then exit out rather than forging through another day and camping again.
From our camp down to our exit the Bungleboori was much more forgiving. Boulder scrambles were mostly avoided with easy walking on the banks and the couple of deep wades actually felt good as the water took the load of our packs.
Smiling again. for now
and then it was up.
Steeply up.
Scrubby up.
And into Hailstorm retreat.
Doesn’t look like much to start but its a pleasant slot that carves all the way to the top of the upper cliff line.
And from there its a relatively easy stroll over the tops to the Waratah ridge track and the monotonous trudge back along the fire trail.
