The Stone Library – Mutawintji National Park, NSW

Descending from the Bynguano Range, we come upon a dead goat, hanging upside down from one of the mulga trees; its rear leg trapped in the fork of two branches. Unable to free itself, it has been a slow death. The grisly find brings home the unforgiving nature of the terrain around us. The air is still and the smell fetid. Our view has disappeared in the hot, close scrub. Trees scrape on our packs as we push onwards. Old branches snap underfoot. And yet, this wilderness has a beauty and magic to it. 

In the July/August 2018 issue of Wild magazine, they published a story of ours about Mutawintji National Park in western NSW. The article described the park’s many walking trails, its Historic Site as well as two 'Wilderness Zone' overnight trekking options. The information had been gathered the previous winter, when we spent 10 days exploring Mutawintji. And the park, left a strong impression. It possessed such an immense sense of space and timelessness. The landscape seemed durable and eternal; the scenery vast and beautiful in the evening light. 

So, we have decided to share here our more personal observations of how and why this place resonated so strongly with our aesthetic and sense of wilderness. For detail and track notes, see Wild mag. But for the special beauty, read on.

Crabapple Kingdom - Whispering Gully, Barrington Tops National Park, NSW

14/4/19 5:41pm

I am writing this to you from the forest; sitting in the tent. The ground is lumpy but soft. The creek is just a few metres from the door and it is noisy over the rocks. It is day 2 of our walk. My lower back is aching, sitting hunched over my notebook. Caz is rustling around beside me searching out the lumps under his sleeping mat. He extracts a stick and then a rock. He flattens some dirt. He has filled one bad hollow with his spare socks. 

It has been a long day. I am tired and my eyes just want to close but it seems a ridiculous time to go to bed. It is dark outside. The rainforest trees are so thick, the valley we are in so deep and shaded, that the evening gloom set in at 3:30pm. The scrubwrens are still chattering outside. I envy their energy. I know the first thing you will ask me - was it a hard walk. I’d say no, but it also wasn’t easy. It certainly was not what we planned.

Capturing the Ephemeral - mist and fog in the Australian landscape

This is an old, but strong, memory: Caz and I standing on the edge of an extinct volcano at dawn. Mist, settled in the valley below. In the distance, the volcanoes remnant central vent, Wollumbin (Mt Warning), and 600m below my feet lush farmland now covering the ancient crater. We are at Pinnacle Lookout in Border Ranges National Park, entranced and awestruck by the day’s first casting of shadows. 

The sun’s morning light is soft and golden. Birds are calling in the rainforest behind me. The metal lookout fence is cold beneath my arms. The sky is clear. And, the mist is making this moment magic. It has thrown a thin veil over the landscape below. The trees, the paddocks, the farmhouses and dams are a mosaic of light and dark - long rays of shadow streak across the hills like the strands of a fine and delicate tapestry still being woven.

Two ‘Tops’ Days Out - Barrington Tops National Park, NSW

Tuesday, two weeks ago, I was rock hoping down a narrow creek. Tea tree crowded the banks. The rocks were black and the water a dark trickle. Beyond the edge of the riparian zone stood tall mountain gums with pepper bush, banksia and snow grass in an open, rocky forest.

Tuesday, one week ago, I was rock hopping down a narrow river. Sub-tropical rainforest pressed in either side. The water was fast flowing and crystal clear. Huge Blue Gum emergents towered above the steep sides to the valley. There was red cedar, giant stinging trees and lush green moss and lichen. 

For both adventures, I was in the same national park. As the crow flies, just 22km apart. As ecosystems go, it felt like a millennia of difference - the ancient Gondwana rainforest species so vastly different to the more recent dry-living xerophytes. Both of them exploiting the topography of the high plateau of the Barrington Tops: the wet, shaded, rain-soaked southern slopes and the exposed, dry western fall of the mountains. 

Marching Orders - Cape Le Grand National Park, WA

It takes time, to find the emotional distance one need's, to re-tell a traumatic story. Finally, I am ready to write about the first and only time Caz and I have been kicked out of a national park. 

And not just any national park, but the stunningly beautiful Cape Le Grand in the south-west of Western Australia with its granite peaks and deserted white sand beaches, its turquoise ocean; whales frolicking in deep bays, its unique flowers decorating the low heathlands and our overnight off-track adventure that was, at the time, an absolute joy.

Lessons in the Alps - Kosciuszko National Park

On this, our first (ever) extended walk in Kosciuszko National Park, we learnt a few lessons - that Pygmy possums appear like a blue flash out of the corner of your eye, that rivers move equally fast on the back of rain. We learnt about theft and mountains and aesthetics and adventure. Each lesson reminded us that when out walking, it is so much about the journey not the destination. Here then, are those lessons.  

The silent river - Wollemi National Park, NSW

It is the strangest sensation, to stand by a fast flowing river and hear nothing of its movement - no sound of water over rocks or gravel or bank. The Colo River makes not a whisper of noise as we set up camp on a wide sand beach. A lyrebird, foraging beneath the river oaks, gives an occasional squark but the river moves swiftly and silently by. 

Cutting its way through Sydney’s sandstone basin the Colo River does have stretches where boulder and rock choke its narrow gorge and it becomes the same as any river - noisy and tumbling as water drops and weaves and crashes over small ledges. But these rapids are interspersed with long, flat sections of sandy riverbed and deep pools that smother and silence its voice. 

Much of the Colo River, in its upper, upper reaches, is quite inaccessible. The 361,000 hectare Wollemi Wilderness is, in fact, the largest wilderness in New South Wales, as well as the largest in eastern Australia between Cape York Peninsula and Tasmania. Within this wilderness zone, the Colo River, as it travels eastwards, enters an incredible 69km long gorge of towering sandstone cliffs and high valley walls. Within this gorge, there are a few unlikely access points that can be joined together to form anything from a 2-day walk to more than triple that.