My friend, Roger Lembit, had put a walk on the National Parks Association walks program to Goochs Crater. I joined him on the trip. Roger is a botanist, and has been studying the ecology of the area near the crater for many years. He has been particularly interested in the post fire recovery.
After meeting others on the trip at the Zig Zag Railway carpark, we headed out along the Dumbano Firetrail. On the way, we could not help noticing the vast numbers of waratahs in flower – hundreds and hundred of them! A remarkable spectacle.
We parked and set off walking down a ridge through forest, to reach a cluster of pagodas. On the way, Roger pointed out a lot of interesting plants including some nice orchids. The warpaths seemed to be concentrated on the top of the ridge rather than lower down.
After admiring the view from one of the pagodas, we headed west a bit, and then crossed s swamp to bring us to the rim of Goochs Crater. We then traversed around the rim and dropped down a steep rocky section to the big camp cave near the crater. It was a warm day – and it was a lot cooler in the cave out of the sun. Here we had an early lunch.
After lunch, we left the cave and walked around to the bottom of the crater, and then into the crater keeping a sharp lookout for snakes. We could hear lots o f frogs in the swamp of the crater and suspected snakes would be there too. Further around we did see a snake – it was a bit hard to work out what it was – perhaps a Tigersnake or Copperhead?
We then climbed out of the crater onto some pagodas on the south-western side and after some more photos, we walked back up the track that leads back to the Dumbano Firetrail. As we climbed, the waratahs made their presence felt again.
More photos are on my website here.