On Saturday March 10 2007 twelve members of the UTS Outdoor Activities Club met at 7:30 outside Central station and caught the 7:45 train to Wondabyne station which is less than one train carriage in length! Note you will need to tell the train guard that you want to get off there before you get on the train and travel in the last carriage.
We were quite lucky that the weather was fairly warm (mid 20’s to 30 degrees) because the walk had little or no shade from the sun so we would have been toasted if it was 30-40 degrees and if it was raining it would have been quite slippery and also hard to see the directional arrows scratched into rocks on the trail.
Also because we were the only group to take the walk for the whole day we encountered countless spider webs, with resident spiders along the way. This is definitely not a good walk to do if you are arachnophobic as constantly seeing spiders and having to duck under or break their webs to pass will make you freak out. To see what I mean see my best 3 spider photos Spider 1, Spider 2 and Spider 3.
The walk itself was quite varied, with some sections fairly open and others where the trail had half disappeared and we had to push our way through
I thought the cave itself was disappointing as large parts of the sandstone were covered by ash and smoke damage from camp fires and the bits which remained were covered with graffiti
On the way back I slipped backwards while climbing up a rock. Luckily I didn’t hurt myself seriously, trip leader Freddy applied betadine quickly so the bleeding stopped and none of my gear was damaged 🙂 However it did mean that I wasn’t able to swim in the river at the end with everyone else.
Read several other trip reports and tips from people who have done the walk.
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