Mt Airly and Mt Genowlan – a vist to Mugii Murum-ban 9 – 11 March 2017

The second place we visited on the trip with Wendy were the two mesas of Mt Airly and Mt Genowlan. These were parts of the Gardens of Stone Stage 2 Proposal but are now incorporated into the Mugii Murum-Ban State Conservation Area. The Proposal was to have Mt Airly as a conservation area and have Mt Genowlan added to the adjoining Gardens of Stone National Park.

The only time I had visited the area before was to attend a bushwalking friend’s wedding. The ceremony was in the bush, at what is now the Airly Gap Camping Area. There were some bush activities, but I was ill at the time with flu and spent the time sleeping in my tent. So I was keen to have a look at the area.

Things are certainly better signposted now its a SCA. We note the camping area at Airly Gap when we arrived and planed to camp our first night there. Its a beautiful and sheltered spot. But it was early afternoon, so we set off on a walk up the old tramway past the ruins of the New Hartley Oil Shale Mine. This was very interesting with a few old houses built by the German miners. One had a bread oven outside. Further up the tramway were signs of old mines and the old boiler used to power winches for the railway.

The shale was taken up the tramway in skips, initially through a natural cleft in the ridge above and then down to a railway siding at Torbane. Due to skip derailments, a tunnel was later excavated. Our route, left the tramway before the tunnel and went around the next ridge and up to a nice lookout.

We returned back to Airly Gap and set up our camp. Next morning, we climbed up to Airly Turret. This was easy to do – initially following an old fence line, and then around into a gully and easily up to a saddle. We dumped our packs and scrambled up to the summit of Airly Turret to be rewarded with fine views.

Higher up, is a hill with a communications relay tower on top. We climbed up to the road that encircles this basalt capped hill and found a nice open grassy campsite on the south side. Nearby were some good lookouts. We decided to camp there. We set up or tents and had an early lunch and then spent the afternoon on the walk out to Genowlan Point and back.

This was an interesting walk. Early on we passed the remnants of an old diamond mine. It seems that diamonds and other precious stones often come up close to igneous extrusions and an enterprising miner and made a number of mines on the mesa. He had also constructed a series of roads to access these mines. In some places these roads were more like a roller coaster – very steep up and downs to go over and around pagodas.

In one place, we explored an old sandstone canyon. Friends Bob Sault and Tony Norman had visited this many years earlier and observed that it was decked out with ladders and hand rails, so they called it “Wilderness Canyon”. The aids in the canyon were no doubt put in place by the diamond miner. Further along the road passed through a sandstone overhang. The cave contained some good examples of aboriginal art – a boomerang stencil in red ochre and several white ochre hand stencils.

The last part of the road has now been blocked off by the National Parks service. The end of Genowlan Point is an endangered ecological community. It was a very interesting place to visit with Grass trees, dwarf native pines and some very rare plants found no where else.

We then headed back to our camp on the basalt hill. Before dinner, we wandered down to some nice pagodas nearby for sunset. 

Early next morning, I walked to the other end of the basalt cap for some dawn photography, but the sunrise was quite ordinary. I did find a nice natural sandstone arch however. Also, on the northern end of the basalt cap was a large dam and an old building. This was where the mining operations were carrie out. The dam was to provide water to sluice the quarried material.

We later walked further north to Point Hatteras. Here there are good views and another old diamond mine. I later found another mine nearer to our campsite.

Back at camp, we packed up and had an early lunch. After a bit more photography, we headed back down to Wendy’s car at Airly Gap. This is steep country with tricky pagodas to negotiate but our route down only took 45 minutes.

During our visit, I shot some video from small drone. It presents a different view of the cliffs and pagodas –

It is worrying that although the area has a measure of protection, it will be still be undermined by coal mining. A lot of this has taken place, but pillars were left in place to limit subsidence. Now it seems that the pillars will be extracted. This will surely damage many of the cliffs and pagodas.

More photos of our visit are online on my website here.

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15 Responses to Mt Airly and Mt Genowlan – a vist to Mugii Murum-ban 9 – 11 March 2017

  1. chriskoz says:

    Coal mining makes me angry. How a reasonable person can even consider such useless devastation of environment? Climate chnage from fossil fuel burning is bad enough to ban the destructive activity. But on top of that, destroying the most beatiful places in this country in search of the pollutant, like drug user searching to self-inject poison whatever the cost? That’s simply absurd. Politicians approving such activity, obviously encumbered by coal special interest groups are no different to a drug user encumbered by his dependence.

    • Paul Hunt says:

      They haven’t mined on my Airly since the 50s and it was Torbanite (kerosene shale) not coal that mined. Also they didn’t have our first world solar and wind technology a the turn of last century.
      And if that is the way you feel you are a hypocrite just posting unless you never plug your computer into the grid

      • Dave Noble says:

        The coal mine I was talking about is not “on” Mt Airly, but under it. Its the Airly Coal Mine, operated by Centennial Coal since 2009. More details here. The concern with this mine is that it could result in collapse of cliffs and the pagodas due to subsidence such has happened nearby due to the Baal Bone Mine. The mine produces coal for power generation but not in Australia. It is all exported.

  2. Trish Morrow says:

    Hi Dave
    Greta report. Am heading up there this coming weekend to camp and day walk about the area (guess its a recce for possible future overnights). Have folks coming from Sydney so trying to figure out how to tell them where the turnoff is, as the camping area is not marked on the Glen Alice map. I have a grid ref. My question to you is- is there a sign off of Glen Davis road to alert them where to turn? Google maps not being very co-operative with “airly gap”. Your photo shows the camping area as being signposted. I am trying to get in touch with the ranger for the area, but thought I could give you a go.
    Cheers
    Trish Morrow (from BWOC friend of Marilyn Scott if you know her)

    • Dave Noble says:

      The road is easy to find, although I don’t think it is signposted. As you go from Capertee towards Glen Davis, it is the second turn off on the left (the first is to the Torbane Coal Mine). It is a dirt road – but reasonable quality. It is marked on online maps like this one – as the road to “Airly” and the camp ground is a bit before Rock Bottom (which is marked). The camp ground is clearly signposted and just opposite a small private block with a stone walled house. No water or toilet facilities at the campground, but it us very nice.

  3. Peter Evans says:

    Hi Dave,

    I am preparing an article on egg-ended boilers like the one you photographed at Hartley Vale. Would it be possible to have a hi-res copy of the image in your blog?

    Cheers,
    PeterE.

  4. Dan Slater says:

    Hi Dave,

    Was the route up from Airlie Gap up to the Turret much of a bush bash? How would it go with a 20kg pack? You made it sound easy. Was it, actually? Cheers.

  5. samantha says:

    Hi Dave. We are exploring all of muggi murum-ban. Do you have any gpx maps of valley of the kings ? I have a map recording photo from dingo gap but I was hoping for something better
    Thanx in advance if you do. We’re very experienced hikers and now we’re on a mission to get to VOK

  6. samantha says:

    Thanx all good. We completed it but we started too late and lost light too quick before climbing out so we had to stay in a pagoda cavern overnight til daylight when it was safe to see our climb out.

  7. Sam says:

    Great track , did it again twice without the benighting doing Jurassic gorge in MMB next

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