Dan and a group of friends – Gabe, Sharon and Bridget were coming up for a weekend of canyoning and asked Rik and myself to join them. His plan was to visit Hole in the Wall Canyon and then Banks Canyon in the Wollangambe Wilderness on Saturday, and then an easy day visiting Twsiter and Rocky Creek Canyons on the Sunday. The bonus would be some comet spotting in the evening.
I had been ill during the week before, so was reluctant to do two canyons on the first day, but was keen to get out and do some canyon photography. So was Bridget, therefore we decided to only do Hole in the Wall Canyon and concentrate on photography.
On my previous visit to the canyon, I had spent a lot of time in the upper constriction, so this visit I would concentrate more in the lower constriction and also in the canyon it flows into – part of Bungleboori Creek North Branch known as “Bad Luck Bertie Canyon”.
On the walk out, Dan spotted three different species of orchids that were in flower. He seems to have a knack of spotting orchids.
At the start of the canyon, we passed a large party getting ready. We continued on through the upper constriction and then proceeded to the lower constriction. On this visit, there seemed to be a lot more spider webs in the chamber at the bottom of the first abseil. I climbed over the top of the tunnel section while the others went through – they reported a very good glow worm display. Below the tunnel is a short drop that used to be a scramble, but a fallen log now makes this tricky and it is best abseiled. Not far past this is the largest abseil – about 12 m down into a beautiful lower section of canyon. This is the highlight of Hole in the Wall Canyon.
After this abseil, Bridget and myself set up tripods and spent a fair bit of time photographing. The others continued on their way.
We spent a fair while in the canyon and then moved on to the Bungleboori. Bad Luck Bertie Canyon is quite nice in the short section upstream of the Hole in the Wall Junction. At the junction, there is one short swim and then wades as you move upstream.
As we were photographing, the party we had passed earlier, passed us. We took our time – conditions were quite good with soft indirect light in the canyon.
After the canyon, we took the exit track and, after a late lunch on a nice rock on the ridge, we then continued back to the cars. We had to wait about an hour for the Banks Canyon party to rejoin us. While we were waiting it had started raining and even though it was not too heavy, we decided to head to Rik’s place at Blackheath rather than camp out and then see what the weather was like the next day. As it turned out – the weather was quite nasty – no chance to see the comet. The next morning we had a long breakfast in Blackheath and gave up any canyon plans for that day.
More photos are online – Hole in the Wall Canyon and Bad Luck Bertie Canyon.