South Wolgan Canyoning

Liz and Duanne were quite surprised to see me waiting at the end of the road at Medlow Bath when they finally walked out after dark. They'd been out of contact all day, and it was only the fact that Liz had mentioned that was where they were climbing that made me turn up there. I didn't have any other way of getting in touch, that was for sure.

After a feed at the Ivanhoe in Blackheath, we headed out on fire roads to Barcoo Swamp. This would have been uneventful except for the wombat that ran out right in front of the car along the Glowworm Tunnel Rd. Unfortunately for both the wombat and the car, we collided. The poor wombat ended up dead in the ditch and the car ended up with a large dent in the front, and the bumper pulled loose. We continued the rest of the way more cautiously to the camp site.

Next morning Chris and Liz turned up and we drove out further on the plateau. After a short walk down a fire trail we headed into the bush and quickly found the canyon. While the canyon was very short, the abseils took quite a while as we only had the one rope long enough to reach, so there was a bit of a logjam. The abseils were good, in particular the one down the final slot. Liz then scrambled back up to show that you could get away without doing the last abseil at all. Everyone but Liz managed to keep their feet dry - Liz was the lucky first one down and got to show us which way not to go!

Without knowing where to exit, we headed right under the cliffs. Probably a mistake. We had to bush bash for over a kilometre until we found a spot we could climb back up to the road. We had lunch overlooking some spectacular pagodas and then headed back to the cars.

I had hoped to do another canyon in the area, but we didn't have enough time, so to finish the day we headed to the Dry Canyon and had a walk through that - only I had been through it before. Duanne and I then traversed under the cliffs to a nice ledge in the sun with views out over the Carne Creek and Wolgan valleys. Everyone else sat on a rock with views of the trees - I'm not sure why. Much nicer on the ledge.

We all headed back to cars and everyone but me went back to Sydney. I camped again at Barcoo Swamp as I hoped to do some MTBing on the plateau the next day. But it pissed down with rain, so after checking out a few fire roads by car, I headed back to Sydney instead.

Still a good day of canyoning.