Here is the video from our Jerrara Creek Canyon trip, down in Bungonia State Conservation area.

See Also:

• Jerrara Creek Canyon Guide Article
• Jerrara Creek Canyon Photo Gallery

We shot down to Bungonia late Friday night and set up camp for the weekend. There were 5 of us in total - Me, my fiance Catherine, flatemate Ryan, and two guys from the UNSW Outdoors Club - Stewart and Steven. We woke early Saturday and four of, after signing in at the Ranger station, headed off down the yellow track towards Jerrara Creek Canyon.

We took a few photos from the lookout at the end of the yellow track, then headed past the little sign which tells you that the track has already ended down into the gully which drops you down into the Creek. We got into our wetsuits, climbed down the first little rock face, and set up the first abseil. We all repelled down it without problems, swam around the corner, climbed over some rocks for a while, jumped in some more pools, and before we knew it, we were at the second abseil.

The second abseil is pretty easy really. Its fun because it is 40m so you have plenty of time to enjoy the sights as you slide down the ropes, plus as you near the bottom you really feel the stretch of the ropes, but the whole cliff has a positive slope so it isn’t scary or difficult at all. You land in a large shallow pool at the bottom, and it is easy to get some nice photos of the waterfall from a rock over the side of the pool.

Climbing over that rock onto another rock, down the side of that into a pool, which you swim through to the chock stone which makes the 3rd abseil. This part was my favourite part of the whole canyon because I really wanted to jump it. Steven abseiled down first to do a depth check. I know from the previous time that I had done it that the natural depth is deeper than you can reach, but of course you always check the depth each time in case new logs or boulders have fallen down into the water. We then sent Ryan down with the camera. I then got ready to jump… Now this is quite a scary jump. 7m is pretty high anywhere, but I have no problem with anything up to around 10m - the problem with this jump is that the canyon gets narrower and narrower as it goes down. The water surface is only about 2m wide, which means that if you are slightly off when you jump you could hit the wall instead of the water. In fact, when I jumped I managed to land pretty well, but I still found myself scraping down the wall surface underneath the water (after the water had slowed me down greatly - no harm done) as the wall continues to slope inwards. Anyway, you’ll see it all yourself on the video which I will hopefully upload tomorrow.

From there the end is really just around the corner. We took our wetsuits off, had some snacks, then started the perilous ascension. Damn slate-esque flaky rocks. You spend half your time climbing up rock faces which could come out if you pulled too hard in the wrong direction, and the other half of your time dodging the rocks pulled out by the people above you. Needless to say, we all wore out helmets as we climbed up, but Ryan still managed to cop a small rock in his cheek (small rocks still hurt after falling for a while). The climb out is really quite exhillarating though - every now and then you need to stop and look around. There is a huge drop to your right, down into Jerrara Creek Canyon, and there is an even bigger drop to your left, down into Bungonia Creek Canyon - but That’s OK, just don’t fall and everything will be fine…..

I’m sure it isn’t really that bad. It is all a trick of perception (I hope…). We were climbing a ridge, not a sheer cliff, so if anyone did fall, you could easily grab a tree or something well before you fell any great distance. There was always ground immediately below you - just steeply sloping away from you ground… The real danger was just the rock slides. If you do accidentally create a rock slide into the canyon below, make sure you call out as loud as you can. “Below” is what I was always told. I think some people call out “Rock” or something. Just make sure you do it in case you are create a very deadly rock fall onto a group of canyoners behind you!

Anyway, we eventually got up the top, caught our breath, took some more photos of the view, then wandered back to camp.

The next day Cat, Stewart and I went for a quick trip down into B44 Grill Cave. I have done Grill about 3 times already, and yet still couldn’t get past the Squeeze - Mud Slide section (it kept taking us back to where we had come from!) . Anyway, spent a few hours down in there, out of the heat and away from the flies (I hate flies), but eventually had to head back up to pack up our gear and head back to Sydney for an early exit.

See Also

• Bungonia State Conservation Area
  
• Jerrara Creek Canyon Guide
  
• B44 Grill Cave Guide
• Jerrara Creek Canyon Photo Gallery
• B44 Grill Cave Photo Gallery

I have wanted to post this video for a while because I love how it really shows you how fun canyons can be. And there is no canyon more fun than Sheepdip (called Twister Canyon in the video, there is some history there which I don’t fully understand yet…I’ll have to ask David Noble about that.)

Anyway, this video comes from Craig and Mandy’s Canyon Page and is just a lot of fun. I know as soon as I have kids and they reach the right age, I will be doing all sorts of stuff like this with them too.

Here is the video I put together from our Whitewater kayaking trip back on the 26-29th of November. There was quite a lot of footage, and I spent all day putting it together, but I certainly think this is my best video yet. Each one is getting a little bit better, just like I had predicted! Woohoo for practice!

It is pretty long, but you should absolutely watch until the end of the first song. I think its pretty cool, with a couple of funny bits.

Monday the 26th of November I drove up to the Gloucester Caravan Park where I was to meet three other guys from the UNSW Outdoors Club who arrived on the previous day. I missed the first days paddling, but that wasn’t such a bad thing as most of the day was on flat water or really small short rapids anyway.

The second day we got an early start and headed out along Barrington East Road, onto Westley’s Road and followed that all the way to its end, where a short 4wd track drops down to an old wooden bridge. We dropped the kayaks and gear there, then took a car down river to where Barrington West Road crosses the river at Rocky Crossing. Driving back to the start we got in the boats and headed off downriver. The water level was perfect - enough water to cover everything but not so much water that it was too dangerous for us beginners.

As the only member of the party who could confidently eskimo roll, I found that having the skill was a slight advantage, but not so important. Very rarely was the water depth around the rapids actually greater than 20-30cm - not enough room to actually roll upside down no matter how badly you stuff up, and always easy enough to rescue your boat should you be forced to eject.

This section of the river is graded 1 to 2, which means that you basically face some fast moving water at grade one, and some small drops which may require some manoeuvring around rocks at grade two. Certainly nothing too daunting, and the sort of river anyone with some basic paddling skills could probably have a go on (of course, so long as they have the right gear!). The rapids came often, and made the paddling interesting all day. A couple of the guys had to eject from their boats on some tricky drops, but there were no real problems. We set a really relaxed pace the whole day, never really pushing ourselves, and managed to reach ‘The Steps’ by about 2pm.

The Steps are the most well known part of the Barrington River, with several successive small drops (like steps…duh) which make some really nice rapids. We all managed to make it down the steps without incident, than proceeded downstream for a couple more hours to get to where the car was parked at Rocky Crossing.

The third day he went further upstream, where the rapids are even more common and more frequently larger. We set up a car at ‘The Cove’ (a few hundred meters downstream from the Steps) and then launched the kayaks from up on the Cobark river just before it joins up with the Barrington. The first km or so was a little difficult because we were in quite shallow water, so there was a lot of bottoming out on the river bottom. Not long though and we were back into the real flowing water of the Barrington.

There was one really stand out rapid in this upstream section which would probably classify as a grade 3 drop, although that is really all it was, a single drop. But all of the water focussed into this narrow channel and then went over a drop off of a few feet. It stood out as much larger than all of the rapids encountered on the previous day and was quite exhilarating.

Anyway, the day was quite a long day. We set it up to overlap with the previous days paddling, and we ended just below the Steps, so we had another chance to go over them. Just to demonstrate how accessible the rapids are on Barrington, Ian, the group leader who had done this trip previously, actually went down the Steps backwards. (You’ll see it in the video which will follow this post…)

The two days total paddling all went really well - there were no injuries, things flowed smoothly, and we were lucky enough to have nice hot sunny days the whole time. A great trip for anyone who wants to have an interesting kayaking trip and has some basic skills and the right equipment. If you would like to do it yourself but lack the equipment or someone to take you down the river, then there are a few companies which specialise in kayaking or canoe trips down the river. Canoe Barrington is one of the major companies, while the Barrington Outdoor Adventure Centre takes groups down the river amongst other activities.

See Also

• Barrington River in the TDMSKP Guide
• Photo Gallery of our trip down the Barrington River
• Video footage to follow