Wild Dogs (31/10-01/11/2020)

With 10-15mm of rain forecast on Saturday, and a small amount on Sunday, I relocated the original walk through the already risen Colo River to the less affected Wild Dogs. Given the change, I offered an out, so had only a smaller party of 5 for the trip. As it turned out, for the whole weekend, we had only a few minutes of light hail and a couple of other brief light showers, so it was definitely worth going bush.

At the bottom of Ironmonger, it was so warm that three of us went for a dip in the Coxs. The walk downstream along the Coxs was fairly easy, though weedy in many places, presumably a result of the fires and floods. Though I'm certainly less confident calling things a weed now that I know a few common "weeds" are actually native recolonisers post-fire.

I had listed a choice of a known camp at the foot of Blue Dog Buttress, or possible camp at Merrigal Creek. We were at Blue Dog Buttress by 3, and decided that a camp in the hand is worth two in the bush, so left packs and headed off on a side trip to Merrigal Creek. What was supposed to be a 40 minute each way jaunt ended up taking us about twice that, as the easy riverside walking turned in to steep sidling on rock slabs, and large boulders to negotiate on the final approach to Merrigal Creek. It was a very quick water fill and relax at Merrigal Creek in order to back at camp before dark! Though the campsite at Merrigal Creek certainly justified our decision to camp at Blue Dog!

Back at Blue Dog Buttress, a excellent social evening was had around the campfire.

The following day we headed out via a fairly well-trod SBW route. Up the Buttress to Knights Deck for morning tea, along to Cattle Dog for lunch, and then out via Hobbles Spur in the afternoon. Navigation was fairly straightforward given the extra visibility post fires. There were great wildflower displays of Bluebells (Wahlenbergia) on the way up Blue Dog, and of Flannel Flowers (Actinotus helianthi) at Knights Deck.