Camel's Hump - Mt Kaputar National Park

Caz and I cross through open forest behind Mount Coryah and steal silently south. It is 10:30am and only 5 degrees celcius. The sky is blue. A north-westerly wind feels icy. We walk for a long time without speaking. This is usual. Many words would spoil the growing pleasure of getting out into a Wilderness Area*; there are few that do it justice. 

The silence gives time for my mind to cast lines of thought and memory as we emerge at a cliff edge and stop to check the view. East is Euglah Rock, north is Mount Kaputar, the Governor and all around are as many cliff lines as you could hope for. I remember how years ago, when my father, a civil engineer, read one of our first blogposts he commented that it 'needed more geology'. In this national park, there is no getting away from it. 

Every interpretive sign in Mt Kaputar National Park mentions vast geological timescales and talks of resistant trachyte, shields and dykes and sills, lava, basalt and rhyolite, organ piping or columnar jointing. So this blogpost I dedicate to my dear old Dad. There shall be geology. And one of the best little off-track bushwalks in Mt Kaputar National Park. 

The Geology

My struggle, with appreciating geology, is the numbers - so vast they become abstract. Humans live on average, what 80 years? The Nandewar Mountains that make up Mt Kaputar National Park, erupted between 17-21 million years ago. Back when the earth was just a rock working out how to make the magic of organic life. 

The volcano here was active so long ago that what the lava originally built has now been largely eroded away - approximately one thousand vertical metres of the mass of the volcanic pile has gone. This erosion has been dispersed westwards, creating those black soil plains so sought after for growing crops. Now the highest point in Mt Kaputar National Park is Mt Kaputar at 1510m above sea level. 

Walker on the Lava Terrace

The Walk

What has been left in Mt Kaputar National Park, from that initial volcanic activity and the ensuing erosion, are so many outstanding rocky landforms that for bushwalkers, it is hard to know which way to walk first; which highpoint or cliff edge to camp on for the most spectacular view. 

We are not the first people, impressed by the remaining, wild ranges of this old volcano. Kaputar's first human visitors were the Kamilaroi Aboriginal people. There is evidence of their occupation in the stunning patch of forest Caz and I walk though to the base of Mount Mitchell. Beneath thick trunked, old-growth Silvertop Stringybarks and Mountain Gums, I weave between grass trees backlit with winter light. I pass a thin, dead tree that is scarred still with two obvious shapes. Midway up the trunk, on opposite sides, are missing patches of bark taken for a shield and a coolamon. 

Emerging from this forest into an open grassy swathe, we arrive at the eastern base of Mt Mitchell. Named for Major Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor General of NSW, he passed this way in 1832 and wrote eloquently of the Nandewar Range: "I sketched the trachyte ranges in the East. The faint outlines being barely perceptible under a thunderstorm whose distant growlings were just heard – the picturesque effect of the whole was fine, although the outline was not sharp or well-defined – the singular shaped summits looked like castles at war with the elements."

We were first impressed, by this particular walk and landscape, back in 2014 and posted on our blog about a walk to Mitchell's Dyke, which we nicknamed The Caterpillar. Back then, we stood at this same open grassy patch and chose to veer right, out to the Dyke. Now, I veer left and lead us around a rocky, open ledge and out to Camel's Hump and the vast, open lava terrace that surrounds it. 

It takes us two hours from Coryah Cap car park to reach the east edge of the lava terrace where we drop our packs. Half an hour later, after pushing through light scrub to Camel's Hump, we quickly tackle the easy, short spiralling scramble up the western side of the hump and we are on the summit. There are magnificent views across to Euglah Rock, the Governor, past Mt Mitchell to Mitchell's Dyke, then west to Yulladunida in all its curved, bare beauty with its rarely seen sheer south-east wall clearly visible. In the far, hazy distance are the Warrumbungles and the Pilliga Scrub and still we can see more – the black soil plains and modern geology; gas fields and directly south, just a few kilometres as the crow would fly, the dirty great scar of an open cut coal mine.  

The walk out to Camel's Hump and back can be done as a day walk, with time still to explore the surrounding lava terrace of remarkable open, weathered rock and cliffs. Heading south-west, the plateau looks covered in bushwalkers cairns but on close inspection, each is just one rock that has eroded down its columnar joints until it finally falls apart into ten rocks, like jigsaw puzzle pieces sitting side by side. Two wedgetail eagles are also roosting on trees below the west cliff and the rim of the terrace is scattered with bleached bones from their kills. The eagles rise every now and then to circle the mountains before dipping down to perch and soak in late afternoon sun. There is wildness here but the rocks themselves are the drawcard – cliff lines are marked from 20r to 95r and everything in between. Across at Yulladunida that south-east face is 110m of sheer beauty. 

As the Nandewar Range volcano has been eroded, layer upon layer of lava has slowly been removed to create new and fascinating landscapes. I am learning - if you spend enough time with geology, examine and experience its variations and manifestations, the abstraction disappears. The magic of a different form of wilderness emerges. 

* In 1982 over 30,000ha of Mount Kaputar National Park was declared as wilderness under the National Parks and Wildlife Act. There are three wilderness areas: Grattai (4,300ha) in the northern section of the park, Nandewar (13,300ha) in the central area, and Rusden (12,700ha) in the south. Together they cover more than 75% of the national park.)

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