Monolith Valley

We took some time out and packed up the kids and a few essentials and headed for the bush. Boy – it wasn’t as casual as this at all!!! Patrick took care to plan a route, I bought bigger boots and pants for some of the kids, lighter sleeping mats, gas and whatnot, calculated every biscuit and jelly bean we would consume on this 4 day hike and I even pre-cooked some meals which I then dehydrated… so it was actually really busy for days before we left. Despite all the careful planning and plotting – we still carried 13kg of food for all of us, 10litres of water and each ‘adult pack’ weighed way over 10kg…

We drove to Nowra, dropped the dogs at the budget kennels and drove another hour to Wog Wog, the car park. By then it was 2pm… much later than we had hoped, and we walked more or less straight to the nearest camping cave (3.5 hrs) at Corang and set up camp. It was totally amazing – we got there just as the sun went down and had just enough time to pitch the tents, get a fire going and cook a meal. We didn’t need the tent flies, so we saw the bright starry sky all night… just magic.

The next day we walked for 3.5 hrs to the next stop and set up camp near Bibbenluke Mountain for the next two nights and had lunch  

From the camp we had a great view of Mount Tan – the destination for our afternoon expedition.

Massive rocks everywhere !

In the evening we had a great meal of re-hydrated spaghetti Bolognese and instant chocolate mousse (shaken not stirred in an empty water bottle and then put in the waterfall ‘fridge’).

We set out early for our day walk (without packs, phew!) to Monolith Valley. It was unbelievably beautiful, but the ‘track’ was not always obvious to us, so we took a few wrong turns.

But we did eventually end up on Mount Owen, enjoying the amazing views.

And the way ‘home’ to our camp was much the same – finding the ‘path’ was often guesswork…

We saw amazing country.

Amazing plants and bright green regrowth after a massive bushfire.

Hope you had a good Easter!