On the Sunday of the Australia day long weekend, I tried my best to cram some family friendly canyoning in so that everyone with us could come along. The plan was to head out to do River Caves Canyon in the morning, then come back and do the Glow Worm Tunnel and canyon…it sort of worked out that way.

I organised to meet Penny at Zig Zag at 9am, and so had to leave the camp site at 8am. Well it turns out that after a night spent up drinking around the fire until 4am, most people don’t like to get out of bed! So we lost quite a few of the participants from River caves, and ended up heading out with just Carmen, Ben and myself to meet Penny.

We met up, then drove to the canyon, walked down the ‘Natural Bridge’ saddle into the gully. Walking along the gully (through the billion spiderwebs!) we actually managed to walk a short distance past the canyon before I stopped to check the maps and Jamieson directions, only to look up and notice the incredibly narrow crack in the cliff face covered up with bright green trees. So we walked back the 50m to the bottom end of the River Caves canyon, and upon walking into it, the change was just awesome. A ‘Canyon’ is a hard to define concept when it comes to deciding whether you are bushwalking, canyoning, or maybe you should be paddling - but instances like this make the difference oh so obvious. The difference between the gully we were walking in - a gully with cliffs on both sides of it, and a flowing creek in the middle - and the canyon that we just walked into - also with cliffs either side and a creek in the middle - left no doubt in your mind that one was really a gully, and the other was a canyon.

River Caves Canyon leaves no doubt in your mind where its name comes from either. The high walls are incredible, and the overhanging caves at water level are really quite awesome. We enjoyed the change from the hot open gully to the narrow, cool, dark canyon. Walking up the canyon (against the water flow) was very easy and the scenery was beautiful - if there was any complaint to be laid against this canyon, it is simply that it is over too soon. If you blink, you will miss it.

So after we got back to the car we dropped Penny off back at Zig Zag, then drove all the way around to Newnes again to pick up the masses for the second canyon of the day - the Glow Worm Tunnel Canyon. My plan was to drive a short distance down the road, then walk up the hill to the tunnel, but there was concern that the kids wouldn’t be able to make it (being an 8km round trip), so we decided to drive to the tunnel. Someone knew a shortcut across to the top of the plateau (because I knew the drive out to Lithgow, then back up Glow worm tunnel road took a long time) so we decided to go with that option. We crammed about 8 or 9 people into each of the two 4wd’s we had…we had to, the shortcut apparently was a 4wd track - and off we went. 3 hours later, and 18 very bored, sore people got out of our 4wd’s at the Glow Worm Tunnel parking lot. The short cut wasn’t nearly as short as I expected, and we ended up needing to go all the way along the Glow Worm Tunnel road anyway.

Oh well, we made it, and most of us decided that we would simply walk back down the hill this time, rather than go back via the 4wd track. So we walked through the tunnel - I don’t want to ruin anything here for people planning to do the tunnel, but there’s something pretty cool in the tunnel, and it rhymes with Flow Terms. Actually, to be honest, they aren’t the most impressive display of Glow worms that you can find - but to be fair, it was in the middle of the day with many many many people walking through the tunnel constantly. So the poor creatures were probably trying to hide for the most part.

Once on the other end of the tunnel, the plan was to then go back up via the canyon beside the tunnel - thus completing the Glow Worm Tunnel Canyon. But because we were walking back down into the valley below, we didn’t head back up to the cars via the canyon - so we missed out on the canyon

We did however, not miss out on the walk down into the valley, which was pretty spectacular. The walk was a very easy gradient the whole way back down to the Wolgan River, and the views from the beginning were really very nice, looking down over the valley.

We all eventually made it back to our camp site, and had a much more relaxed night than the previous one.

See also:

• River Caves Canyon Guide Article
• Glow Worm Tunnel Guide Article
• River Caves Canyon Photo Album
• Glow Worm Tunnel Photo Album

We didn’t get to Newnes on the Friday before Australia day until about 11:30am, so it was a pretty late start. We decided to pick Firefly canyon because it had a few easy abseils (good because this was going to be Josh’s first time abseiling) and wasn’t described as a ‘long’ day or anything like that - hopefully we would be able to get back before nightfall!

We walked from the camp site along the road to the gate, then through the industrial ruins to the large gully we were meant to walk up. I was hoping to find a track, but alas, none existed - it was a gully bash the whole way up. The first bit was just bashing through thin shrubs, the occasional stinging nettle etc. I stumbled across a Bower Bird nest (first wild one I had ever seen) scattered with the usual assorted blue decorations. As the gully increased in steepness we found ourselves climbing up boulders more and more and bashing through shrubbery less and less. We got to the first cliff line pretty quickly, but our excitement at that achievement died just as quickly as we realised that the first cliff line was nowhere near the last one - this hill seemed to just keep on going up!

After a while we eventually reached the final cliff line - it was a rather frightening cliff line to reach after an hour of climbing; one that didn’t have any apparent way up it! It was a sheer cliff (with over hang) and it seemed to carry on like that in both directions. Not detered (we trusted Jamieson!) I sent Jake out to the right up a little ascending ridge of boulders that might possibly show a way up. He climbed up a little and reported that it was a no go. I told him to keep going. I was right :p

The way was up a very narrow crack between a large slab and the cliff line. You could cold chimney it, or shimmy through it and step up some conveniently stacked chock stones and climb to the top of the slab. Once atop the slab, you then had to jump over the crack and climb up a short cliff to get on to the very top of the cliff, but it was easy enough (if not incredibly dangerous simply because of the exposure). We scrambled up the next pagoda rock section and finally reached the top of the ridge where we saw a prominent little cairn.

We started down the other side, and found most of it was down steep difficult drops, but we zig-zagged regularly and managed to find a way down without needing to abseil anything. We did use a hand line at one point, and had to make some hairy jumps, but made it without incident. Once we reached the main creek, it was reasonably easy going. Bashing our way through the creek, picking our way through the millions of spider webs (which we had been doing the whole way up and down either side of the ridge now that I mention it), we pressed on until it started to get wet before putting our wetsuits on. A short while later we reached the first abseil and dropped down that into a nice chilly pool.

As I said above, this was Josh’s first time abseiling - he’s an incredibly capable guy and done his fair share of physical activity, so I was confident he wouldn’t have any problems - but of course you still put all safety into place. I talked him through it from the top while Jake was below on belay. The abseil wasn’t too difficult and so was a great start for him. He dropped over without any problems and we were on our way. The second abseil was only a short distance after the first one, and we got to practice again. The third one, not far again, then the fourth one…then the fifth one…When we came to our sixth abseil we decided that we must be at the end and there must be another way down. We were right, and a track headed off down the true left side of the canyon.

We descended the final drop down the gully at the end of the canyon pretty quickly and found the track heading back to the ruins. We didn’t get back to the camp until after 8pm (that’s what you get for starting a canyon at midday!) . Jamie seemed to really enjoy his first canyoning trip, and Josh did well for his first time abseiling ever.

See Also:

• Firefly Canyon Guide Article
• Firefly Canyon Photo Gallery

For the Australia Day long weekend I went up to historic Newnes camping with a group of family and friends. My goal was to take a few first timers through canyons and explore some of the Newnes region. I arrived early Friday morning before most people had arrived, but Carmen and Mark had arrived the night before, so were kind enough to offer to put up our tent while Jake, Josh, Jamie and I went up and did Firefly canyon. It was at about this time that I realised that I had a flat tyre - which is impressive because the road into Newnes is actually pretty good, so I can’t blame the road.

Anyway, it took us about 8 hours to return from the Canyon, then Jake, Josh and Jamie left for the Central coast again and I spent the remaining sunlight running around trying to make sure my campsite was set up, my tyre was replaced with the spare, and all that sort of stuff. I met our neighbours who ended up very kindly providing me Chicken Madras for dinner (camping in style! - better than the continental pasta instant meals I had brought with me) and we all sat around the fire for much of the night chatting.

The next morning we waited for the next group of our party to arrive, then helped them set up tents etc before I stole Nick, Mark and Carmen and drove all the way back down the Wolgen valley, back to Lithgow, Zig Zag, then all the way along the Newnes Plateau to the car park for Rocky Creek so that we could do Twister Canyon. Twister canyon was over before we knew it, and we were back in the car repeating that long drive back to Newnes.

The problem with the Newnes Plateau and historic Newnes down in the Wolgan Valley is that Newnes actual is a GREAT campsite. Easily my favourite camp site that I have ever stayed at - there is a river with flowing water, open grassy area well maintained, spectacular cliffs all around, great people (everyone was so nice all weekend) and plenty of stuff for kids and families to do (we had kids with us). But there are no easy canyons in the valley. All of the easy canyons are up on the Plateau, which is a 2 hour drive to get to. So either you camp in the family friendly camping ground and have no family friendly canyons, or you camp on the plateau at Barcoo Swamp, Bunglebori Camp ground, or Deep Pass and have family friendly canyons but less family friendly camp sites.

Anyway, back that night and there was a lot of drinking and sitting up around the fire playing Scategories with our neighbours. The next morning I got up at 7am and drove back down to ZigZag with Carmen and Ben to meet Penny (someone I just met through the OzCanyons group). We then drove out to River Caves canyon. That was far shorter than I expected, and I feel really bad that we did such a short canyon with Penny, but I had to keep the canyon relatively easy for Carmen and Ben (Carmen has very limited motion and strength in her arms thanks to rheumatoid arthritis since she was a teenager, and Ben is 10). Nonetheless the short bit of canyon that there was was still pretty spectacular. We were back at the car in a few hours and started the drive back to Zig Zag, then back around to Newnes.

The plan was to then do Glow Worm Tunnel Canyon, and I expected to just walk up from the valley to the Tunnel up on the edge of the Plateau, but someone in our party knew another way around to it via 4wd road. We decided to drive to it, but instead of it being a shortcut, it involved several hours of 4wd driving along Blackfellow Hand Road in two 4wds jam packed full of adults and children (almost 10 bodies per car because we thought it was going to be a short drive!). Anyway, if you are camping at Newnes and want to do the Glow Worm Tunnel, I highly recommend just walking the 5km up the hill from the Wolgan River - it really isn’t that hard and is much nicer than driving around.

Since we had all spent so long in the car, I was keen to walk back down to the valley rather than drive back around, besides one of the 4wds was getting low on petrol and so had to go back into town and couldn’t do that with 9 or so people in it. So most of us walked back down to the valley, meeting up with the road about 8km out from the camp site. Normally if you took this route you would have a car left here, but as we drove around, we didn’t, so the plan was to basically hitch hike. Better than that though, an amazing group of campers did the most incredible thing and went back to their campsite to get the rest of their cars, then come back and pick everyone up and drive us back to the camp ground. Like I said, everyone was just so incredibly nice, helpful and generous all weekend.

Anyway, back at the camp everyone was considerably more subdued this night than the previous night. The next morning we simply ate and slowly packed up the camp site and headed back home.

I really like camping at Newnes, and will definitely be returning. Next time I will have to go with a group of canyoners though, so I can get through all of the grade 3, 4 and 5 canyons in the area.

Shane

See Also:

• Newnes Camping Guidebook Article
• Firefly Canyon Guidebook Article
• Twister Canyon Guidebook Article
• River Caves Canyon Guidebook Article
• Glow Worm Tunnel Guidebook Article
• Firefly Canyon Photos
• Twister Canyon Photos
• River Caves Canyon Photos
• Glow Worm Tunnel Photos

Trip reports from each canyon will follow shortly.