Brindabella’s
Sept 30th - 2nd October

Written by Matt Barnes

After trip leader, Matt Smith dropped his bombshell at the general meeting that due to some unforseen, mechanical circumstances, the trip would have to be cancelled, I asked around the meeting for anyone who still wanted to go. Apart from the sound of crickets, there were no takers. A quick ring around on Wednesday and we had some takers.

Arrangements were made and we were set. Kirk and I met at our usual spot, the one we’d been using for the last 25 years for our group camping and 4wding trips, at about 7am and headed off to Campbelltown to meet Mark and his family. Like a finely tuned machine, everything ran like clockwork. We’d no sooner found a spot to stop to wait for Mark, and within seconds, he came barrelling along the Hume to pull up behind us. A few quick introductions and we hit the road to Canberra.

We made pretty good time to the nation’s capital, despite stopping at the golden arches at Sutton Forest for a break. It seemed like about 2,000 other people had the same idea. Straight through Canberra, topped up with fuel around the corner from John’s place and headed into the Brindabella’s with me leading the way. Oh dear!

After a few quick stops for map referencing and a U turn or 2, we headed down Gentle Annie Fire Trail to Flea Creek. As anyone who’s been down this way and knows this track would know, it is a fairly steep track in parts, and is a good warm up for what was coming up.

We stopped at Flea Creek for lunch, had a bit of a wander around and chatted with a local couple in a Discovery out for a picnic with their dog. As it turned out, the Disco was a loner from a mate while his own Rangie was getting stroked out to 4.7 L.

I questioned the presence of the dog in the National Park and suggested they might be risking a fine, but they didn’t seem to be worried. We wished them well and headed up the hill onto the Webb’s Ridge fire trail, towards our ultimate goal for the weekend, McIntyre’s Flat.

Our mid-afternoon run through the bush saw very little on-coming traffic, just a Suzuki and a few trail bikes. While I was waiting for the Suzuki, I was staring aimlessly into the bush up an overgrown track and spotted my first Wallaby for the weekend, sitting very still waiting patiently for us noisy intruders to move on. Well, for the noisy intruder, the Mitsubishi and the Disco, that is!

We stopped at the power line tower on top of the ridge and admired the view to the east looking at Mt Corrie and out to the west towards some of the still-intact pine forests and some controlled burning that State Forests was doing. We travelled on for another hour via the Waterfall track and down the hill to McIntyre’s Flat to find a camping spot. The long weekend had made it hard to find a spot down here. Three other groups had already laid their claim, so we parked ourselves in a clearing just behind the hut, right next to the Goodradigbee River.

We set about getting firewood from the various stacks of dead wood around the place, courtesy of the devastating fires of a few years ago. As we settled down to dinner, we were witnesses to a small part of Kirk’s complex life.

As Mark, Alex and I went about our cooking routine, preparing our dinner, Kirk was putting all of his bush skills to good use as he managed to conjure a complete meal out of next to nothing. Well, it was actually out of a take-away container. He’d brought two complete meals with him that he’d bought at his favourite Thai Takeaway the night before and refrigerated. Then reheated his chicken stir-fry on Saturday night, over his gas lantern. Sunday night was Pad Thai! Mmmmm!

Had a pretty good sleep in on Sunday morning, thanks to some well behaved kids and considerate co-travellers. We dawdled around with breakfast until finally heading off at around 10AM to Mt Corrie for lunch. Second gear, low range had the Yoot clambering up the steep hill out of McIntyre’s Flat. That oh-so-sweet sound of a roaring V8 echoing back off the opposing hill, letting everyone for miles know that the LROC was on the move.

Naturally, we had no problems with stray wildlife on the day trip. We travelled back along the waterfall track and onto Webb’s ridge road, heading south towards the powerlines track. We hadn’t been on the powerlines track long before we met our first on-coming traffic, two guys on quad bikes. Unregistered quad bikes. Apart from a few more unregistered bikes, we weren’t interrupted any further on our climb to the summit of Mt Corrie.

Since the last time I had travelled this track, some of the steeper, interconnecting tracks that provide more of a challenge and a more direct route to the bottom of the valley, had been signposted to discourage their use so that regeneration could take hold. Unfortunately, there seems to be 2 sets of rules, one for the 4wders and one for the trail bikes. It was quite obvious that only 2-wheeled vehicles had been using these tracks. On reaching the summit we saw only one other vehicle up there and 3 mountain bikes, with 7 people in bike gear. It turned out that 4 of them turfed their bikes into the bush half way up the hill, rather than carry them up.

A loud hissing sound was emanating from the rear tyre of Mark’s disco. It looked like a small stone had cut through the tyre right next to one of the lugs. While we changed tyres, another group of 3 vehicles arrived, followed by 1 more and their dog, then another 4. After lunch and a few photos, we did some negotiating with some of the other 4wders, and managed to do a bit of a shuffle to get our vehicles turned around and on our way back down the hill.

We took a different route on the way back that I was not familiar with and due to some ambiguous signage on the track, missed our turn-off and went on a bit of an adventure. After a bit of number crunching between the GPS and the map, I realised the discrepancy and headed back to the track junction, then on to our correct route. We soon found that we had been passed by one of the other groups from the top of Mt Corrie and had to slow our pace to stay out of their dust cloud. (Geez, those Toyotas spew out a lot of dust). This track, Dingi Ridge Trail, brought us out not more than 200m from the junction of Webb’s ridge rd and Waterfall track. From here it was a short run back to camp.

We spent the remaining hours of the afternoon sunlight getting our fire going again, teaching Mark the intricacies of tyre plugging and discussing the worlds problems.(Note Josh;- Mark promised he would get his tyre repaired by a professional as soon as he got back). Our peace was soon broken by our immediate neighbours, firing up their chainsaw to cut up some firewood. As the 60-minute mark passed I was beginning to wonder if they were building another log cabin down there. I wandered over and saw that they had cut and stacked enough wood to last the winter. As I started walking back, they shut down their saw, at the very second that the next camp started their chainsaw up. It’s a wonder they didn’t scare their dog away with it.

All too soon, Monday was upon us and it was time to pack up and start the run back to Sydney.
We made our way out through the northwest of the Brindabella’s to Yass for lunch. It wasn’t until this point that I found out that Mark and Alex planned to take the kids into Canberra for the next couple of days. At least they had a shorter journey than we did. After lunch we said our goodbyes and kirk and I headed back to Sydney.

A relaxing weekend, with good weather, good company and most importantly, no damage (apart from the tyre), punctuated with unregistered vehicles, dogs and chainsaws in the national park.

Thanks to all for making what was looking like a non-event, a great weekend away.