HEATON STATE FOREST – 20 May 2026
With almost two weeks of rain behind us, I wasn’t sure that this day walk would go ahead. There was muttering of “mud, leeches, and rain” from some, and it ended up that it was just Trish and me. But when you’re doing an exploratory trip, with just the two of us I didn’t have to worry about people either “white anting me” or just complaining – bonus.
Years ago, I read a trip report which noted that there was a “cave” and the area and creek were had stuck in my memory. Sadly, I misplaced the trip report, but I had a vague idea of the cave’s location. So, I decided that it was time to check it out, particularly as the walk was up on a ridge, and with all the rain, I didn’t want to do any creek walking.
Trish and I started walking at 9.45am in perfect weather (thank you weather gods). The cliff line we were heading for had the notation “116r” beside it which I think means “relative 116m”, because the cartographers couldn’t actually measure it from the aerial photos taken when they were made the maps.
The road up to Heatons Lookout was ok, and then it wasn’t, I persevered but then decided that I’d park somewhere where I could turn around, cause if it got worse than this the CX5 wouldn’t cope. As it turned out we only had to walk 1k on the road to where we’d turn off, Taylor Road.
The puddles were a bit big too, there were two of them. A 4WD wouldn’t have had any problem. Where were you Brad?
Surprisingly, when we got to Taylor Road, there wasn’t a locked gate, with a 4WD we could have driven right to the cliff line.
So, a kilometer later we were at the cliff, and the lookout.
Stunning views down into the valley. It definitely feels that it’s 100m down to the bottom of the cliff. Looking across at the highpoint in the distance, this is where I’d taken Liz, Alan and Jim on the Lawyer (blood sucking leeches) Creek trip and where we’d encountered all the leeches.
We made our way down to a gully/creek that was shown on our map, following a 4WD trail and came across this amazing campsite, probably about 40m diameter with a couple of fire pits, perfect site for a car camp.
Sadly we encountered a waterfall, no-way down on this side of the cliff. nice easy walking though.
I tried to take a photo of the waterfall (I’d neglected to do so when I went down to make sure there wasn’t a route down), but obviously all I got were rocks in the distance.
Rather than retrace out route to the gully, we made a bee-line up to Taylor Road, there seemed to be some old tracks in the scrub, possibly timber getters.
It turned out that our route up to the road was serendipitous as when we got to the road, we found another “track” heading towards our next destination, so we followed this down to the 56r cliff.
We followed the track, which was at times obvious and other times hard to see, and eventually got to the top of the cliff. We headed over to the north to a gully that showed up on the map. Before continuing down, we agreed on a turnaround time of 1pm.
The route down the gully was relatively easy, from time to time we thought that we were on a footpad, but I think it was probably kangaroos.
At this point (and I did go down a little further), we were coming to a “drop off”, there possibly was a way down, but with just the two of us and no hand-line, we didn’t want to take the risk. The gully would always be there to explore when there were more people with us (and a hand-line).
We decided to go up the gully, looked a bit nasty, but more fun than retracing our route down.
Trish starting up, it was a little difficult for me to get past this log LOL.
Relatively easy going, watch out for the log though.
We thought we’d get out of the gully, but the route that we’d have to take involved a “step up” beside a big rock which looked as though it would fall if you put to much pressure on it. So, we went back into the gully.
Just love Trish’s pink jacket, so good for photos!
We had been looking for a cave, and sort of found one!
Finally getting out of the gully, the vegetation above Trish looked really good.
Trish getting out of the gully and onto flat ground. You can see how the terrain drops off – a lot of air out there!
We thought we were close to the top of our original 116r cliff, but sadly we were only half way up, the good news was it was easy going vegetation, even though it was all uphill LOL.
We thought we were at the top, nope, it was still a long way, but there was a good lookout here that Trish took advantage of and discovered that there was a pretty good 100m abseil that maybe MSS or BWOC could put on their calendars. Well, as we had to continue up for another 20m, the abseil is probably just 80m.
We were back at the first lookout that we encountered at the end of Taylor Road at 1pm which was the turnaround time that we had agreed on. So, we were ahead of schedule. After a quick snack, we headed back the way we’d come, arriving back at the CX5 at 2pm.
We’d walked for 4.15 hours and 9.6km which was surprising as the fire trail walking was roughly 5km, can’t believe we covered 4km off track. Only 1 teeny tiny leech each and no wet feet.
Trish and I both agreed that it was a great day out, and we discovered a lot. So, John/Jeff, you guys up to come back with us and check out what’s at the bottom of these cliffs, we figure that a creek to the south of Taylors Road will get us down to the bottom – possibly with a hand-line, you guys up for it? And with a 4WD taking us all the way up Taylors Road, we’d have hours of exploring at our disposal LOL.
Banner: Too close to the edge for me LOL.
Thumbnail: Is it a death cap mushroom – pretty sure it’s not!
Don’t forget the campground at the end of the 4wd track. Was an excellent half day
Ah yes, forgot about that! Yes, you’re right it was a half day, but it felt like a full day LOL>