The Canyoning Near Sydney (OZultimate.com Canyoning) website was established in 2003. The first track notes, for Firefly Canyon, were written as the existing published guide was inaccurate. The site has expanded from there to cover various items of relevance to canyoners around Sydney, as well as general information on canyoning and rope skills. It now contains track notes on nearly 60 canyons around the Sydney area, information about the various canyoning areas, and many photos and trip reports. The site gets over 300 unique visitors a day, and serves nearly 25000 pages a month at the height of summer. All of the track notes have been written by Tom Brennan (me) and most have been reviewed on a number of occasions.
While not part of OZultimate.com, you may also like to look at Bushwalking NSW, a bushwalking track notes site that I run.
Why online?
Conditions change in canyons. Guide books go out of date. The internet is a fast publishing mechanism. It enables changes to track notes and corrections to made quickly, and without reprinting an entire book. As of 2023, it also allows for other canyoners to contribute conditions reports.
The internet is also a cheap publishing mechanism, both for the publisher and the reader. Donations are solicited for the printable canyoning guide, but this does not even cover the cost of the web hosting! Certainly I won't be quitting my day job!
If you find any errors on the site, please contact me to report them.
Technology
For those who are interested in these things, the pages on the site are static HTML, generated partly by an offline MySQL database, using the server-side scripting language PHP. The code has been developed from scratch by me. The site is (as of 2015) in HTML5.
About me
I first canyoned in 2000, when a friend took me through Twister and Rocky Creek Canyons. For many years before that, other friends had suggested I come canyoning, but I wasn't much of a fan of water, and I couldn't see why I'd enjoy it. How wrong I was!
Since then I've been canyoning and exploring every summer in the Blue Mountains. I have done around 300 unique canyons in Australia and overseas. I occasionally train abseilers and lead trips for Sydney Bush Walkers (SBW).
For a few seasons I built up some experience in the popular canyons, initially with others leading, then leading my own trips. My first overnight canyon was Davies Canyon in 2002. In 2003, I first went exploratory canyoning with Dave Noble. That expanded my horizons of what was out there, and I started doing some exploring, both with friends and occasionally by myself.
Over the next 5 or 6 years I did plenty of old favourites, as well as exploring many canyons new to us. In 2009 I did my first multi-day trip into the Coorongooba, and since then have done another 12 long trips into this spectacular but remote part of the Wollemi Wilderness. I've also done many multi-day trips into more accessible parts of the Wollemi Wilderness, including the Wollangambe (Dumbano & Yarramun), Bungleboori, Nayook, Rocky Creek, Annie Rowan Creek and Wolgan areas.