It was time to head out to Newnes and walk up to the Red Rocks for a high camp.
In the party, as well as myself, were John, Chuin Nee and Jasper, and also Digi Dave, Stacey and Rik. We arrived at Newnes about lunchtime and walked straight up Little Capertee Creek and then up a side creek to the Wolgan/Capertee Divide. From there it was only a 15 minute walk to our campsite. We set up our tents and flys and then we could spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing, enjoying the magnificent views and taking the odd photo.
The day was cloudy, but a few gaps in the clouds promised a reasonable sunset. It turned out very good, but the gaps were narrow – so the so called “magic hour” was really only a ten minute period. And in those ten minutes I had to wander around very fast, changing lenses, adding filters, moving from one vantage point to another, trying to capture a few shots.
Our campsite was close to a great natural balcony which offered very fine views of the Capertee Valley. It was a great place to enjoy some wine and cheese and other delights before dinner.
After dinner, I tried some astrophotography. No moon was out and so the sky was nice and dark. The milky way was nice. Three planets were visible – Mercury, Saturn and Mars. There were two comets that could possibly be visible – but looking at my photos blown up on the computer at home – I could not see them.
Fun with some sparklers
At dawn, the next day, there was only a minuscule amount of valley mist, and the sunrise was nice but not overly impressive.
After breafast we slowly packed up and walked back to the saddle above Little Capertee Creek. There, some of us dumped our packs and wandered south along a nice chain of pagodas – climbing the “Pagoda of Death” which offers very fine views. Then we went back to our packs and retraced our steps of the day before down Little Capertee Creek back to the cars.
A very nice weekend out in the bush. More photos can be viewed online on my gallery here.
