My first Australian canyon and a great start to 1.5 weeks in Australia! Thus far I have lived in New Zealand for almost 5 years of my life without visiting neighboring Australia. Over the last few years I have met a few Aussie canyoners who encouraged me to come visit and see what some of the Blue Mountain canyons have to offer. I was sold by some of the photos I saw. Many of the canyons are beautifully sculpted slot canyons like I am used to seeing on the Colorado Plateau, except they have flowing water, glowworms and an abundance of vivid green vegetation that give the canyons a Jurassic appearance. I thus saw them as a perfect compromise between Utah's dry sculpted slots and New Zealand's very wet and cold post-glacial canyons. Now about to leave New Zealand for the Northern Hemisphere, I booked myself a trip to Sydney to explore some of these canyons first hand.
We set off a bit later than planned due to a failed alarm. Despite needing a full day to complete the canyon, Joe and Greg decided we should still go for Whungee Wheengee Canyon, a tributary of the Wollangambe River. I saw my first Australian leech within a minute of arriving at Mt Wilson. Happily it was the only one I would see that day and it was not on me. We followed fire roads and trails through the open eucalyptus forest, past meter-high ant hills, down into the Wollangambe River, which involved some short scrambles to get through cliff bands. As the canyon was on the other side of the river, we then had to climb a hill again to reach another ridge and then hike to the first abseil into the creek, just above the start of the canyon. The impression I get is that many of the Blue Mountain canyons do not have large drops in the canyons and the largest abseils of the trip are commonly abseiling down cliffs to get to the start of the canyon.
The canyon started
small (10 m-deep) but continued to build momentum as we climbed over,
under and around a few boulder choke obstacles. Despite the heat of the
day, the water was surprisingly and refreshingly cool. The start of the canyon had quite an abundance of large car to room-sized boulders that had fallen into the canyon. In two places it was necessary to hold your breath and duck under these obstacles. There were a few downclimbs and abseils along the way too. I was really enjoying the sportiness of this canyon.
There was also a surprising amount of life to be seen in the canyon: lots of fish, bright red crayfish called "yabbies," frogs, spiders with webs spanning the canyon, lizards of various sizes. After a few slot sections the canyon opened up into a hidden valley of lush rainforest dominated by ferns.
Whungee Wheengee is strongly jointed-controlled, which meant long narrow straight stretches of canyon that would begin to twist and meander as they turned a corner looking for the next joint to follow. The canyon had lots of long swims through dark sculpted slots.
Rather abruptly we exited the last section of slot to arrive back at the Wollangambe River. To get back to our exit we had to work our way upstream through the river. This involved considerable amounts of swimming across long pools in the river through flooded corridors of rock. We were swimming and scrambling for about an hour, which was exhausting work with my pack and clog-like canyoning boots, but the scenery was absolutely stunning. Being a weekday, we had it all to ourselves.
I managed to catch a water dragon near where we exited the canyon,
probably the biggest lizard I have caught before. Then a sweaty hike
back to the car. A satisfying day that got me eager to explore more of
the Blue Mountains. It's a really special place. Thanks to Joe and Greg.
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