A Long Weekend Camping at Mitchell River National park

We returned to Mitchell River as Michelle had said it looked quite nice from the photos she had seen from our Christmas Trip here, and it was going to be a hot weekend, so a nice cool river was the perfect place to be.

Our trip down proved eventful though when I looked in the rear mirror only a few kilometres from the campsite to discover that the bikes were missing off the back of the car! The tube holding the bike rack had snapped cleanly off. We turned around and headed back to the end of the road, but there was no site of them. I figured the next most likely place they had fallen off would have been some 50 kilometres back, so the chances of them still being there would have been very slim, so we continued down to Angusvale.

Our previous campsite was taken, and there were no river spots left at Angusvale so we headed downstream and set up camp near the river ford after discounting a few other spots. It was a lovely spot, and a good place for the kids to swim with the river quite shallow and cool as it flowed over the cobblestones.

We were relaxing around our campsite when a guy drove across the river. This was fine, but then he decided to go driving up the river. he had forgotten to lock his hubs and had become stuck. He had to jump out of the car in a metre of water and lock his hubs before he was able to drive out. of course he, and his car was soaking wet. I was surprised he didn't stuff his engine. This was our first clue of the dreadful night that awaited us.

He was joined a short time later by some of his mates, who set up camp across the river. Everything was fine till evening set in and the alcohol they must have been consuming in vast quantities took over.

They drove across the river a number of times, and as it got later they drove up and down the river banks and throughthe campground, beeping their horns and being a general nuisance to everybody.

They knocked over a few trees by the side of the track, and whilst hoonign around at the top of the hill, they must have hit a tree and damaged one of the cars. This resulted in an all out brawl back at their campsite only quieting down when one of them threatened to get his rifle out.

In the morning the 4WD club that had been camping down at Rock Creek came through and sorted them out, taking their rego plates and reporting them to the Police and Parks Vic.

As Rock Creek was now vacant, and we had no idea if could expect the same again tonight, we went without breakfast and moved our campsite. Thankfully the trouble makers moved on and we were able to enjoy the rest of our weekend.

We spotted some huge carp swimming in the river, and wee spent the rest of the hot afternoon relaxing in the water. We had a little bit of excitement after lunch when Liam came splashing towards us with a look of pure horror on his face as a snake went skimming across the water behind him!

As the afternoon passed on, we spotted some mountain goats high on the cliffs. It was amazing watching them make their way across the cliff face with absolutely no fear of heights. Makes me shudder just to think of it.

Apart from the snake we spotted yesterday, Michelle also saw a huge goanna make it's way off into the bushes, and the kids also found a baby dragon. As we were packing up, we also found a huge Huntsman Spider which we made sure didn't hitch a ride back with us.

Strath Creek Walk

This has been one of my favourite walks, and I'd like to return here again. There was a mix of some very steep climbing, and walking along unmarked trails which makes for a most interesting, challenging and enjoyable walk. The walk we followed is as per the guide notes in Day Walks Victoria.

Our walk started at the car park near Strath Creek Falls, which only had a little water flowing over it. It had been quite dry in the weeks preceeding our walk, which was good considering we would be walking through the creek beds along a good portion of this adventure.

We descended to the top of the falls where we climbed over the safety rail and crossed Strath Creek.

From the creek, we climbed quite steeply up the ridge to McMahons Road

The walk along the road was nice and flat, and gave us a chance to recover from the steep climb. We followed the road to Diggers Gully Road, which wound it's way across the top of the range.

We followed a walking track along the ridge. It wasn't clear at which point we were to descend the gully so we back tracked a little before turning down the hill.

The descent was extremely steep and there was no track.

Yes it was steep; it was quite difficult to keep upright!

It was easy enough to be sure we would end up in the right place though, with Diggers Gully Falls on our right as we continued down the 45 degree slope.

Down the bottom of Diggers Gully was quite picturesque, with cool clear waters to sit and relax by as we took pride in our safe arrival and could confirm we were back on track.

Oiyee, Ada and myself continued up stream to Margaret Falls, which had only a small amount of water trickling over. It was evident however that quite a lot of water had flowed through here a few weeks before when Melbourne had the torrential rains, with large trees down across the river.

We returned to the remainder of our group and made our way down Diggers Gully, walking along the creek past scenic rock pools, which helped to keep us cool on the warm day.

Eventually the creek dried up completely, any water running below the rocky surface.

A large fallen tree proved no obstacle for Oiyee who made it over in a single bound!

Time was eluding us, so we decided to abandon the walk upstream to Tunnel Falls given the lack of water and continued down Diggers Gully. We missed the track climb up the ridge to the road, instead walking directly up the steep ridge.

Missing the track however proved fortuitous as we discovered some old mine shafts in the hillside.

We walked along the boundary to a private residence down to Strath Creek; the green and shade a contrast to the open and very dry forests we had just passed through.

It was very nice to be walking along water again; some very lovely and cool rock pools where very inviting.

The rocky creek bed required a constant watch to avoid tripping, however this distracted from the other risks of low lying branches...

We came across a web full of tiny baby spiders, who must have numbered into the thousands. The slightest touch of the tree housing them resulted in a furious scrambling of the spiderous mass, which expanded and then slowly contracted as the imagined threat had passed.

As we continued further up the creek, the walls of the valley closed in further until we came to a lovely fern filled ravine.

Little Strath Falls was definetly little, though it marked the place at which we needed to look for our exit out of the valley back up to the road.

The point of exit up the ridge was not clear, and we walked past Rebecca Creek a little to be sure we were heading in the right direction. Basically we had to climb an unmarked goat track along a small ridge just past the creek. We clambered up and past Rebecca Falls up some of the steepest ground we had covered on the walk. Various animal tracks zig-zagged up the ridge, and not only did we feel like mountain goats, but we could also hear a mountain goat!

When we had climbed high enough, we were able to spot the little critter on the other side of the valley, who happily answered our imitation goat calls!

Clambering up the last steep section through some more open forest we spotted a Mountain Dragon sunning himself on a rock, happy to suffer our inspection.

Finally we made it back to the road which we followed to the picnic area where we had left our car. We enjoyed a lazy relax and rewarded ourselves for having completed a difficult but extremely enjoyable walk. All the more special considering for two of us it was their first real day walk!

Click here to see a map image of where we walked on this trip.

Mallee and the Border Track

We packed up camp early and were in the car driving across the island by 8:00am. I had wanted to visit Kulkurna Cliffs, but according to the map it was about a 20km trip and we would have to come back the same 20km, so we left them for another time. We passed a few kangaroos along the track, including one with a very cute joey.

We started off our trip down the border at Border Fence Road, which we missed to start with as the border to South Australia was unmarked. Curses not having my laptop! Next time we travel along here we'll start right from the top near Border Cliffs, and do the full border navigation, as we had to divert from the Border Track further along, as detailed below.

The track surface had changed from the slate grey of Lindsay Island to a desert red/orange as we headed south along the border. We pulled off near a tree to cook up some breakfast; the kids were starting to get sick of bacon and eggs. Well, James doesn't even like eggs, but I guess a few days of bacon sandwiches does get boring, though we did have porridge with honey one morning.

As we continued south, the track surface changed from the dark orange, almost red to soft yellow sands.

You could really appreciate the powers of irrigation and how much the farmers had changed the land with the native vegetation and desert on the east of the track, and the cleared green pastures on the west of the track.

We diverted from the Border Track near Berrook, and headed east along Sunset Track to visit the Underbool Green Opal Mine site. We had a little trouble finding it at first; damn that laptop again, but after 20 minutes exploring the desert in the heat and flies we returned to the car and headed back along the track, this time spotting the correct turnoff.

With shovel in hand we set off for the walk across the desert to the mine site, battling the flies which were swarming in their thousands. After a couple of kilometres, the mullock heap was visible across the dunes, and it wasn't long before we arrived at the mine site, the shaft collapsed but visible. We spent some time here looking around for opals, finding some interesting rocks with the green colouration, but no real opals to speak of. Still, it was interesting and worth at least one visit.

We continued down Underbool Track and Sunset Road to the highway, which we followed into Murrayville, to stock up on ice and drinks. The kids had earlier asked about seeing camels in the desert, so I explained to them they may spot them in the Simpson, but not around this area, only to see a camel in a paddock on the edge of town!

We rewarded our hot desert walk with an icecream each, and picked up a 24 pack of Pepsi Max for $23, normally $10 at Safeway in the City! and joined up with the Border Track again. The track was getting really sandy and soft as we joined the Border Track proper.

We visited Scorpion Springs where the kids dug down through the sand looking for water. They wanted to stay here for ages, but we had to think about getting to the campsite at Pine Hut Soak, which we did at about 5:00PM. There was another car setting up camp here at the campgropund, and after chatting found out it was the same car we had passed on the banks of the Murray at Ned's Corner. Peter was travelling through the Big Desert area with his daughter Melissa, and they had planned to travel the entire Border Track, but had heard in Murrayville that the section near Scorpion Springs was impassable after rains, which we had experienced a little of.

We had a simple dinner tonight of Hot Dogs and bread, followed by pancakes for desert, then shared the campfire with Peter and Melissa.