BOX CREEK FALLS & THE KOWMUNG – MAY 2015
Box Creek Falls > Box Creek > Kowmung River > Tuglow Falls > Tuglow Caves > Kowmung
A hidden gem in Kanangra, used by most for a “bludge” weekend, this was my third visit to the Falls, we weren’t staying here though, we were on a mission to walk the length of Box Creek and explore upstream on the Kowmung. I’d read about trips to Box Creek Falls by CMW, but had never taken the time to go on one of David S’s trips, so he kindly told me where the campsite was and on our first visit a few years ago, we’d left one of our party at the Falls campsite and wandered off downstream. We wanted to get to the Kowmung and see if there was a nice campsite there, but we ran out of time and turned back a mere 500m from the end. So, I was determined to go back and talked the A Team into coming along for the ride. Steve R, Greg G and Trish M joined Cath B, Jeff B and me for the adventure. The plan was to visit Box Creek Falls, walk down to the Kowmung and then go downstream to a lovely spur which would take us up to the fire trail (where we’d parked a car).
It’s an easy walk from the Kowmung River Fire trail down to the Falls, it’s all off track (which is nice doesn’t encourage every man and his mother to go there), and the scenery is spectacular. It’s always a pleasure to take people there for the first time, the falls are truly incredible, they cascade down about 300m in a series of pools and waterfalls. We took a moment to go over and visit the campsite so they could see how nice it was. Each time I go there I clean up the campfire scar and pull out weeds, I don’t want it to become as overused and compacted as places like Wollangambe Crater. Another campfire scar was there, never mind, next time I go back I’ll clean that one up.
We started negotiating our way down beside the falls, there’s a bit of route finding involved, you can traverse back to the falls for photo opportunities (or in summer for a swim), but eventually you are forced into a small gully and that’s the route you have to take down, everywhere else is just too steep.
We were finally at the bottom and started downstream. The walking’s fairly easy, the scrub is quite friendly and there are only a few creek crossings, AND, no-one cared whether or not they got wet feet – except Jeff of course who always tries to keep his soes dry. There are a couple of spots where you can go up over a small spur and cut off a few hundred metres of creek, and we did this a couple of times, only because we weren’t sure what we would find downstream and wanted to pick up some time. Eventually though we reached the confluence of Box Creek and the Kowmung. Now, I have wonderful memories of the Kowmung, particularly downstream in Morong Deep, wonderful campsites, easy walking on the side. Not quite what we encountered here. 
The campsite I envisaged at the junction just wasn’t there, no flood plain (where sand had built up over the years), and lots and lots of scrub. We were in need of a half way decent site that would accommodate us all so we decided to head upstream to Tuglow Falls and see what it was like there.
An hour later and we were up at Tuglow Falls, there was flat ground but it was at river level and very soggy, covered with weeds, very unattractive. We rock scrambled around to see the Falls (nice!), and then the rest went and set themselves down to boil the billy while a couple of us walked upstream (into Chardon Canyon) to see if there was a spot to camp there (nothing!). We weren’t sure where we’d camp other than going back to Box Creek and looking downstream but before we did that we thought we’d climb the cliffs to the back of us and get a better look at Tuglow Falls. 
This proved fortuitous as once there we looked upstream and there was a lovely spot a mere 50 metres upstream. So, we scrambled back down the cliff, collected the others, climbed back up through the cliff line and down the other side to the nice flat campsite. We didn’t look at the map until we’d set up camp and had the fire going, and then discovered that we were actually just inside the private property boundary, didn’t feel great about that, but the campsite was really nice so wasn’t going to stress over it too much.
Next morning we changed plans and headed off up a convenient spur to the ridge that paralleled the Kowmung and headed in the direction of Tuglow Caves (looking across Tuglow Creek) we could plainly see the farm and property that we had inadvertently camped on, looked like someone had been home too! None of us had been there before so it was interesting checking out the cave entry (a metal door welded across the opening with a padlock). We then negotiated our way down to the Kowmung crossed it, and were right at our lovely knife-edge spur which headed all the way up to Boss Peak and thence the Kowmung River Fire Trail and our car.
It was a lovely trip, plenty of time to explore the area and determine what spots we’d like to return to. Jeff actually went back later that week to our exit track, some way along the route he’d dropped his map case/compass/track notes, I think he drove all the way from the Central Coast, out to Kanangra and back all after work one night! He was attached to that map case though.