Dingo Creek

I left before 6am to meet Michael and Steve at McDonalds at Richmond. I had no food in the house so ran across the road to the supermarket to try and get something for lunch. Memo to self. Richmond Mall doesn't open before 7am. I was forced to suffer the indignity of ordering two muffins and an apple from Maccas for lunch.

We took the two cars up Bells Line to the Zig Zag turn off, a slow trip as a result of a crawling driver most of the way to the Mt Tomah passing lane, and a torrential downpour just past Mt Wilson. It turned out that Geoff and Peter had a 4wd, and so my car was unnecessary. We pooled vehicles and headed out on the Glowworm Tunnel Rd, turning off towards Deep Pass. We were some way along the road to Deep Pass before we reconsulted the map and found that our target was in fact behind us! Eventually we parked the cars at a bend on a fire trail, and set off along a small spur towards Dingo Creek. Pretty quickly we were greeted by impressive cliffs across the far side of a small creek, and our spur looked like it was going to be similarly endowed. Instead, we skirted around the top of another small creek, and made our way down slopes to a larger creek. This flowed over impressive slabs in a series of small cascades, before tumbling into the main valley at a 10m waterfall. The waterfall had no obvious route down, so Steve climbed up and over the next spur to find a route down into the main creek.

Just to make sure we had missed nothing, we wandered back upstream until we were just around the corner from the waterfall, but didn't find anything major. Returning to our entry point we headed downstream hoping to find something interesting. After some distance, making pretty slow progress, we found a road. It looked like an old timber-getters track, and judging from the number of stumps, this area had been fairly heavily logged in the past. We had a short morning tea in the sun and pressed on. We continued to find stumps for quite some distance downstream. At this point the creek started to get more bouldery, and the going became even slower.

After another hour or so Michael decided that the scrub choked section of creek wasn't going to end any time soon, and we started looking for a way out. The first gully proved possible, Steve quickly finding a route up the wet rock. I climbed up on a pagoda at the top for some extra views while everyone else headed for a rocky outcrop for lunch. Ominous clouds and thunder meant lunch was an abbreviated affair, and we set off up the hill to the road, which was only about 15 mins walk. Another 20 mins and we were back at fire trail near the car. Michael picked up the entire front grill from a vehicle which had been abandoned, and the rest of us picked up other bits of rubbish while Michael and Peter collected the vehicles.

We farewelled Geoff and Peter, who were heading back to Orange. However, with the weather still holding, Michael wanted to get a photo for the cover of the Bushwalker magazine, so we drove a bit further out along the Glowworm Tunnel Rd and down the No 3 Trail. A bit of walking from the car brought us to an impressive overlook of Carne Creek, where some photos were staged. Then it was back to the car and back to the Pines at Bilpin for hot chocolates.