YERRANDERIE – KOWMUNG RIVER – JUNE 2015
Oberon Stock Route > Moonshine Creek > Waterfall Creek > Kowmung River > Carkeneller Spur > Mt Hub > Oberon Stock Route
I’d been pouring over the Yerranderie Map for some time now thinking that it would be a good place to go and had spotted this big sandy area (about 400m long) that was on the old series map in Moonshine Creek, plus, the creek had such a cool name.
Yerranderie is a good drive from the Central Coast, and so a long weekend was a must, and there was a June one coming up, I figured that we could easily walk down to Moonshine Creek, check out that big sandy bank to see if it was a nice camp site and then follow Waterfall Creek downstream to the Kowmung, have a nice camp somewhere on Waterfall Creek and then another one on the Kowmung and then walk out. If all went to play on Day 2 we might do a walk up Dickensonia Spur on the other side of the river. There looked to be nice bluffs up there. An easy three days! Jeff, Trish M, Steve R and Col McC (who was experienced but hadn’t walked with us before) bought into my vision of a great weekend.
We all drove down on Friday night and stayed the night at the Mt Werong Ranger hut and next morning we chatted with the other bushwalkers that were going out into the wilderness that weekend. I got to chatting with an older guy (well, truth be known he was the same age as me!) and told him we were going down to Moonshine, he said he’d always wanted to go and stay the weekend down there and explore around, so I wasn’t the only one who was fascinated by this area!
We set up a car shuffle, one at the start, one at the end, not that far apart but who wants to walk on fire trail. We started walking down the spur I’d selected as our access route. It was pretty cruisy, half way down a sow and two piglets crossed the spur in front of us, that was a bit of a shock, they just ran in front of us. Eventually we negotiated our way down to Moonshine Creek, there was a bit of a scramble to get down as it was quite steep at the end of our spur. So, here we were right where the map showed a sandy bank about 100m long, it was very overgrown, no evidence of sand anywhere, but it was flat, maybe when they did the aerial photos back when the maps were made it looked sandy, but now it was just dirt, albiet flat! Not a particularly nice camp site either! There was a better camp site at the intersection of Still Creek, but too close to where we started, other than to use as a base camp and explore Moonshine. Well, tick Moonshine creek off! So we walked downstream towards Waterfall Creek.
One thing that was really interesting, was that the closer we got to Waterfall Creek there were pools in Moonshine. Now, I’d been doing some caving lately and they looked remarkably like the rim pools that you see in limestone caves. It sort of made sense, I remembered reading somewhere on the Net that a DA was lodged years ago to mine limestone in Moonshine Creek, it wasn’t approved but the presence of rim pools was pretty cool. The creek must be coming out of a spring further upstream that started underground, and maybe there’s even a cave. Pity we didn’t notice this further back as we could have done a bit of exploring.
We eventually arrived at the junction of Moonshine and Waterfall Creeks, we dropped our packs and went upstream to see what the waterfall shown on the map was like. There was a small one at the end but the big 45m waterfall, if there, was out of sight. So, back down to pick up our packs, have some morning tea and then head downstream. I was hopeful for a nice flat camp site somewhere on Waterfall. Alas, that was not to be. We rock hopped for quite a way and came to a few pools that we had to negotiate around. Was a very pretty creek but eventually we came to a pool that 
stopped us. Steve and Col went to the right and Jeff went to the left. Trish and I stayed put waiting for instructions of the best way to go. We waited, and waited, eventually Jeff told us his way was a go. But where were Steve and Col? After a half our or so we eventually regrouped but I didn’t want us to be separated for so long again so we formulated a plan. It was extremely slow going, we’d only made 500m of headway in an hour and the banks were way steep and the map didn’t show any let up from the steepness. You can’t tell from the topo until you get in there, sometimes there is steepness but the creek itself is flat, other times like this, the banks of the creek were steep too.
So, we Reassessed The Situation and if the creek didn’t get better by Hub Creek we’d pull the pin and climb out onto the ridge and try to make Black Snake Bend by nightfall.
So, we headed off again, and true to form, the creek didn’t get any better. We were at Hubb Creek and there was about 3k of Waterfall Creek to go, it was 1pm and we’d be walking down Waterfall in the dark if we continued on that way, so, we elected to exit up onto the ridge at Hub Creek. Camera’s put away, no photo evidence of this tortuous route!
We topped up with water, it was a very hot day and we were climbing up 300m of elevation in the heat of the day, and it was incredibly steep. We took lots and lots of stops, Trish actually had the flu so wasn’t doing well at all and Col had hit the wall, but there wasn’t an alternative so we continued up. We reached a small saddle and regrouped with Steve and Jeff, and Reassessed The Situation. It had taken us far longer than we expected to reach the small saddle we were on. It was late in the afternoon and we had 1.5k of ridge walking, and about 300m of creek walking before we hit the Kowmung, we had to really keep focused. Jeff and Steve were doing the navigation and I stayed at the back keeping an eye on Trish and Col.
We were three quarters of the way down our spur by 6pm when we lost the light and all got out our head torches. With darkness our progress was slowed considerably, but again, no alternative than to continue on, by this time we were short of water. Jeff and Steve did a sterling job, keeping us out of Black Snake Gully and unerringly leading us down to the Creek. It was five very relieved people who hit the creek, there was a flattish spot there but I assured them that we weren’t far from the Kowmung and it would be better to hit the river as the camp sites would be larger (enough for five tents). So, Col and Trish picked up their packs and soldiered on.
Finally we broke out of the creek and onto a pebbly flat, they weren’t going to go another step and so we set up camp there, half on the pebbly flat, the rest of us up on a small bank, not perfect, but at 8pm, we would have camped anywhere! We had a camp fire and dinner and then all fell into bed!
Morning came and we Reassessed The Situation. We’d basically done two of our days’ walking in one day (camping in the approximate vicinity that I’d planned on camping on the second day), so we decided that we’d walk downstream a little ways and find a better camp site, set up and then have a lazy day exploring down the river with day packs. All thoughts of crossing the Kowmung and checking out Dickensonia went Our The Window!
All went to plan, except for the prickly shit scrub that we hit from time to time. We found a good camp site, set up and then headed off. As luck would have it, we happened upon a blazed path. A year ago when I was caving in Church Creek (a ways downstream) a local landholder had told us of a NPWS group that had gone in with horses and put in pig baits. Apparently a track for the horses had been made with a chain possibly horses don’t like that prickly shit either. We followed this “track” all the way down to the end of the Uni Rover Trail. Luxury not to have to battle the scrub and it just took a little care to follow the route they’d taken.
Trish stayed behind at the Uni Rover camp site and the rest of us explored all the way down to Billy’s Point then turned around and came back. The Uni Rover camp site was impressive, lovely large grassy bank and a superb waterhole to swim in. We decided that we’d have to come back one day when it was warm to swim in that waterhole.
Back to camp and a lovely evening by the camp fire. It was pretty straight forward the next day, we hit a lovely spur up to Carkeneller Ridge and were back at the cars by mid afternoon.
So, another “M Adventure” over … we’d checked out Moonshine Creek, one day we might go back there and camp at Still Creek and explore around the creek system, but that would be way down on the wish list. Trish and I would like to return and start higher (way higher) in Waterfall Creek, take some ropes and abseil the 45m waterfall (but that’s way down the wish list too). And, I wouldn’t mind going back into Waterfall Creek and finding out what the creek is like after Hub Creek, that would be a relatively easy 2 day walk, but best done in the summer when you’d be happy to get wet and just forge through the pools instead of trying to skirt around them, also way down on the wish list, unless someone wants to convince me that it’s a “must do”! So many walks, so little time!