Today’s aim was Blue Lake and Carruthers Peak. Once at Blue Lake I did think that Mt Twynam looked doable, but part way there I opted out knowing my body wouldn’t take walking to both peaks. Geez that’s quite some uphill walking to do to get up to these locations!
Blue Lake and Headley Tarn looked stunning, their colour changing from ominous dark grey, to lush green, to reflecting the sky with patches of white and blue. They say this place can have all seasons in one day and, apart from snow, I felt it.
A few little treasures along the way were:
…seeing the change in the mountains from rolling hills and rounded rocks in NSW to suddenly dropping off with jagged rocks into Vic, the change being over only a few metres;
…watching thousands of white moths get pushed up from Victoria spilling over into the Snowy Mountains;
…sliding down a snow patch on my bum on the return trip because it was easier than waking down it… although it ended in a swampy puddle and i got quite wet;
…3 geocaches, one being an ammo can with original log book from 2001 which I really enjoyed reading;
…and trying out the “Hey Frog” trick on Corroboree Frogs and finding it worked. haha.
At the time of writing this, many in Australia have started voting for their favourite 10 songs released in 2022. It’s called the Hottest 100. Listening to the radio yesterday one texter said a particular song was their #1… and it occurred to me that there are so many different personalities out there with different likes. I certainly didn’t like that song, but they probably wouldn’t like any on my list either. I mean, every year theres a mixed bag in the Hottest 100. The point is, this led me to thinking about liking different people.
I might not be anyone’s favourite song, and everyone I meet might not make it in my Hottest 100, or 200, or even close.
I’ve been a people pleaser for as long as I can remember. It’s been an issue highlighting itself in my life a fair bit lately. I hate the idea of offending people, hurting them, or them hating on me. But I do it still without meaning to. Sometimes I make mistakes and someone gets upset by it. But show me the human who hasn’t made a mistake. Show me the human who hasn’t done something that’s hurt another. Its a natural part of life. It’s just that some are more offensive than others. While i try not to hurt others, I hurt myself on a daily basis. Every decision I make has the potential to affect people negatively. Even if I hide in the bush away from all people, I find myself thinking I might be letting someone down by not being somewhere else. That doing nothing could be letting others down immediately, or affecting someone’s future negatively. I go to work when my whole body is in agony and pretend nothing is wrong because I’m worried about letting the team down. WTF right!?
I suppose I’ve been trained over my life to keep everyone happy. To not let people down. To give 110% in everything I do even if the result only looks like 40% effort was given in others eyes. It’s well ingrained. My synapses are well set… but not for too long. I’m determined to rewire those suckers.
It’s time to change this. I’ll never be an arrogant bitch, but I’m allowing myself to live free of guilt and shame over the basic decisions I make. They can be bad decisions but they are not necessarily mistakes.
So to finish this off, I’m going to present a few things that are unapologetically ME. A few of my favourite things from 2022. This is who I am. I may not be everyone’s top ten song, aka cup of tea, but I like my flavour and I’m sure there are a few others out there that might like some of my ingredients too.
Favourite Adventure: Clarkes Gorge Walk, near Yarrangobilly Caves, Kosciuszko National Park, NSW, Australia.
Favourite Song: I can’t. Here are a few. Colin – Lime Cordiale; Oh No – Jem Cassar-Daley; Rewind – Ziggy Alberts; Lighthouse – Kyle Lionhart.
Favourite Moment: A day trip. Broomes Head. Can’t say more, but it ended with me wanting more.
Favourite Camp Spot: Yarrangobilly Village – I had a spot away from the crowd, close to the creek, and the brumbies coming through every day were amazing. I think Long Plains Hut might be a better spot but I haven’t tried it yet.
Favourite Movie/TV Show: Gosh, I can’t remember now. Let’s go with Summer Love, an Aussie TV show on ABC iview with 8 episodes of different people staying in an AirBnB at different times. I enjoyed the diversity, the humour, the subjects touched on, and the use of other Australian TV shows hidden in the script like Round The Twist… it was based near that lighthouse too.
Planning ahead doesn’t always work. Like when you plan a mountain adventure up a road that turns out to be closed due to a landslide, so you have to go the long way around. But spontaneity can bring so many treasures as I discovered this day. Sometimes the treasure isn’t the Mountain peaks, but what can be found on your way to them, or even more-so, what falls between them.
I started out taking said “long way around” up onto the Escarpment. I find the Illawarra Escarpment pretty fascinating. How can I describe it without pictures? I just can’t. For so many kilometres you can see jagged cliffs standing over hills reaching down to the Pacific Ocean. From down below and any of many lookouts up on the escarpment you can see it continuing on and on North and South, not in a straight line but wandering in and out away and closer to the water’s edge. Making my way up one of those sloping hills not far below the towering cliffs I saw a sign saying “Cascade Falls”. Why not, I thought. Checking the info board I decided it could and would be done. Time to put that physio work to the test (spoiler alert, it has done its job well – my back is back in action).
As seems to be the case with a lot of walks in this area, you start at an open cleared patch of parkland on the side of a busy road and step into a wall of forest that you can’t see beyond. And beyond is like another world. Dappled light, tall trees with different textured and coloured barks, ferns and rushes lining the sides of the path, moss covered rocks, large vines hanging like leather necklaces from the tree branches, clear purling creeks, a variety of bird songs, and earthy smells. Delicious to the soul, ears, eyes, nose and touch. I didn’t taste anything in there but no doubt there was plenty of bushtucker around me. The track follows the path of the meandering creek. At the end of the line, you find yourself at the cascading Cascade Falls. Here there are two segments of the falls, one that is wider with more steps but less water running over it, and the other is narrower but with more water pushing through a narrow gap between determined rocks. The rocks on one side have a fig tree growing right on top of them, and the roots are draped down over the falls creating a rug-like covering bordering the falls. The tree canopy opens up here as the falls have washed away the top soil and hollowed out small pools at their base. La Nina having finally moved on we have had a dry week here and I imagined how different the falls would have looked throughout the past year of flooding rains, flowing heavily over both sections and the crashing water creating a fine mist shot out in all directions through the little basin I was standing in. I could have stayed here for a long time, but I was meant to be going to Barren Grounds. On my way out I made a quick stop to find geocache GCMJ3C ‘Why McWorry?’.
Having accessed the geocaching app and map, I noticed a couple more on my way up the Macquarie Pass. I decided to make my next stop at GC31RA “Macquarie”, GC86X8K ‘Illawarra Escarpment’, and GCZ3NP ‘I’ll Pass’, the latter looking like another interesting walk in the forest. This stop had me directly below the cliffs of the escarpment and the walk took me to a spot where I was looking up at them on one side and down over the hills to the ocean on the other. The first two caches at the parking area were easily sorted but I ended up having to pass on ‘I’ll Pass’. I attempted to press in through the bushes at three different points, got to about 50 meters from it, but couldn’t find a way further in that didn’t involve more scratches than I’d already gathered here. Looking around me in those bushes, I’d figured I had already found the treasure at this cache location – the views – so decided it was time to move on.
Next stop was a geocache I that got my attention, GC45RN3 ‘Challenge: Five Forgotten Years’, which I definitely have covered. And guess what… it was unloved so I could add it to the tally. Nothing more to note on this cache as it was just a boring guard rail hide. Of which I again stopped at just up the road to pick up a Geocaching Australia Moveable cache and placed two more there. The moveable I picked up looked a lot like Santa. He might have to stay with me over Christmas and try a little photo-bombing. Having taken the long way around to Barren Grounds, rather than making my turn when needed, I continued on to Robertson to get the fuel that I now needed. And what do you know, I found another distraction. Not a geocache, but a sign pointing to Belmore Falls. Don’t mind if I do.
The falls were gorgeous. Literally. A three tiered plunge fall. The top fall was the longer one, splashing down into a large bowl then running over a rock platform before plunging once more into a smaller bowl and then continuing out of sight down another step and into the creek below. I love how waterfalls carve their way through the rock as best they can. Water is quite powerful really. And how on earth did those youngsters get down to that rock platform? Secret old track the National Park closed I am sure. Looking at AllTrails I recall the point on the existing track where you can step into the warning zone and down between and below the falls. The walk back up would be a killer! AllTrails doesn’t have the track available, but you can see it marked as Private.
It’s been a long time since I enjoyed hunting for geocaches, and suddenly today I wanted to. There were two in the Belmore Falls vicinity that I stopped at. The best cache of the day by far was one that led me to a lesser known small waterfall on Barrengarry Creek just up from Belmore Falls. A segmented block fall. When the water is flowing stronger it would be a curtain of water pouring over the sharp lip. I loved the way the creek widens out across a flatish rock platform that abruptly drops a couple of meters down to another wide rock platform. The abrupt drop looks like it was all one level once but over time the rock or sediments under the lower section had washed away leaving it precariously hanging there until finally one day it just cracked and dropped. The green mosses and surrounding plants were really refreshing, and mixed with the vision of falling waters, I was rejuvenated by it. Which was a great thing, because I lost my prescription glasses somewhere, walked half way back up the track looking for them, then back down again looking around the creek again and then back up the track again. No luck. There was only one spot I didn’t go over three times – the spot where I took a wrong turn heading for the geocache and was climbing through bushes and slipping down rocks. They weren’t cheap, but the focal length was old and I happen to have new ones on the way, so I wasn’t totally devastated. However, they did mean my eyes would soon be sore and a headache quick to follow.
Now where was I meant to be going again? That’s right, Barren Grounds. I was originally meant to go there first and then visit Carrington Falls after as it was further up the road, but now, having taken a different route, I happened upon the Carrington Falls turnoff first. Visit another waterfall? Of course!
Carrington Falls start off as two segments, joining up shortly after dropping over the edge and bouncing off a number of rock shelves. The rocks then press in on either side creating a punchbowl fall dropping over a few steps and heavily filling a large pool below. When I first stepped up to the lookout I had an Aha! moment. This is the waterfall I keep seeing in Australian TV shows and movies. Close to Sydney, impressive, easy to access, and not too dangerous to walk around above, so I can see why. There were lots of people swimming in the pools above the fall. It was a hot day. I just sat to the side watching the water fall whilst eating a late lunch of… I broke the diet I’d been doing so well with. I needed something to ease the head pain after losing my glasses and hunting blurry eyed for them for ages. I know it doesn’t work like that, but I was convinced by myself that it might work. It was an apple and cream pie from the iconic Robertson Pie Shop just up the road. I was such a tourist today!
Okay, touristing done, it was time to get to the mountain I was aiming to climb – the Barren Grounds Lookout area at 660m above sea level. Apparently the Illawarra escarpment ends here and, although it appears the same, further south it is called the Cambewarra Range. It was 3:45pm. I’d walked over 10km already. Prior to today I had only walked 2km before my back giving out on me for the last 2 months. This walk was over 7km. I wasn’t going to see any little treasures without glasses. It wasn’t going to happen. Not today.
Now To Morrow 