CA NBERRA BUSHWA LKING CLUB INC. NEWSLETTER P.O. Box ISO, Canberra, A.C. r. 2601 Registered by Australia Post: Publication number NBH 1859 VOLUME 29 !IIJIIIS] LWJ!11IL] MAY MONTHLY MEETING WHERE? Dickson Library WHEN? Wednesday June 16th 1993, 800pm onwards WHAT? This month's programme features Allen Nutman, a geologist, who will talk about the geology of our local walking areas. So anyone who has ever wondered about such matters will be able to get their questions answered. Before the meeting why not join other members for a convivial meal at the Vietnamese Restaurant at the O'Connor shops (the one on the corner), be there as close as possible 6.00 pm to ensure there will be plenty of time to finish the meal and still get to the meeting on time (BYOG). Waffle on Walks the check-in officer, Roger Beddis 2303348(h) & 2056192(w). This is obviously essential for search and rescue purposes but is also the means by which club Winter has arrived. This means we need YOU to help walk statistics are collected. If returning before 10 pm, by leading trips. If you are a cross-countly skier, lead it should be done that day, otherwise early the next some ski tours. If you are not, be aware that a high day. During the week he can be contacted at home proportion of our regular leaders are, so they will not from 6.30 to 7.30 am and at work from 9 am to 3 pm. be leading as many walks over the next few months. Leaders should also advise Roger if their trip is This leaves two options - either: YOU help out; or cancelled. opportunities to go on club walks are severely reduced. Gerald Dodgson To plan our winter programme I will be holding a walks planning evening: WHEN: Tuesday the 22nd of June 1993, any time BUSH DANCE after 7.30pm The bush dance held by the Club in conjunction with WHERE: 63 Macrossan Crescent, LATHAM the Wildemess Society at the Yan'alumla Woolshed on the evening of Saturday May 15th was a resounding I would be particularly interested in seeing potential success. Despite the cold night, well over 200 people, new leaders - pethaps you have completed one of the including many Club members, attended and about navigational workshops and are thinking about leading $1700 was raised for the Wildemess Society. Many your first walk? If so this is the perfect opportunity to thanks to Sybille, her sub-committe and all other obtain ideas and advice for your first walk. helpers whose sterling efforts made such an enjoyable evening possible. Finally a reminder about checking in. After returning from awalk, leaders should report their safe retum to 2 MEMB ERS HIP MATTERS inquiries to the district forester P.O. Box 58, Queanbeyan, 2620; Phone 06 2972044. New Members MT NIBELUNG The Club welcomes Graeme McFarlane, Ian Jope, The Budawangs Fran Tomkins, Bathe Chapman, John MeMurray, Bill 112 May 1993 (Leader Geoie Cartei) Stock, Ann O'Connor and Nick Bailey. Mellowed by a gourmet wining and dining around a Pmspective Member camp fire at Yadboro on Saturday evening, it was haiti to take seriously the need to rise at the crack of Phillip Williams, Belconnen. dawn on Sunday. This is what George was in effect suggesting as he hoped we would be ready to begin Editor walking early - preferablyby 8am. A few of us were moving around in low gear about 6.45am but gentle Harriette Wilson has kindly agreed to deputise forme thythmic snoring from the leader's tent didn't inspire during my absence overseas and will prepare the us to hun-y! However, as soon as George awoke he August and September newletters. Copy for these busied us into action so that by 8.30am we were issues (bit not July) should be delivered to Harriette heading towards the river crossing and the start of the (27 Forbes Street, Turner; 2474284[h]). climb up Kilianna spur. First-Aid Course A comfortable temperature and brilliant clear blue sky made walking very pleasant. After negotiating A first aid course for Club members has been the scramble to the first Castle cliff-line, we paused arranged for the weekend of July 10-11th (see to admire the first of many fine views this walk activity programme for details). All Club members provided. Our next rest was in the cave shortly who do not hold a current first-aid certificate are before the track swings away from the cliff, crosses urged to attend. a minor creek and heads up a steep slope with the Tail of the Castle on the skyline. We huffed-puffed to where the track divides - straight ahead to The Tunnel and left for Monolith Valley. For those who had not been in the area before, Alan Mikkelson explained that 'the tunnel was really a cleft in which fallen rocks had jammed, creating a covered passage. He also regaled the group with colourful accounts of various Club ascents of the Castle - the Bungey rope occasion and a more recent trip when uninitiated (and unsuspecting) members were taken up in the dark (for the 'Castle by Moonlight' trip) and only realised (with some horror and trepidation) what they had scaled when, in daylight the next morning, they faced the descent! But we didn't have The Castle as our goal - our sights were set on Mt Nibelung. We put tales of the Castle (or was it Castle tail) behind us and pressed on, via Monolith Valley, to Mt Nibelung where "a Locked Gate touch of adventure" was promised by George in the form of a 'crevice' to negotiate. In our jolly, The Forestry Commission of NSW has placed a bantering chatter the previous evening, the 'crevice' locked gate across the Badja Forest Road just beyond had grown deeper and deeper, yawning into a the turn-off to Tuross Cascades. The gate blocks off crevasse or was it a gorge - with sheer walls that we access to the junction of the Woila and Tuross rivers would have to scale? George warned that on a and Jillicambra Mountain and other national park previous trip he had been unable to persuade one areas from this direction. A notice on the gate directs third of a group of 16 to tackle this (even with the 3 security or a rope) and we trembled (!!) at what lay the final hour's drive back to Canberra arriving about in store for us. 10.30pm after a great walk - another Budawangs beauty! The initial scramble onto Nibelung was managed without difficulty. We then took a long break for a Judith Webster well earned lunch, sitting in the sun and delighting in the views which included looking down upon the Letters to the Editor secluded little sanctuary of Monolith Valley. Then, fed and rested, we were ready to tackle any kind of Dear Editor, crack!! Sylvia was one of the first to descend this and did so with mountain goat-like ease, spuming the I was pleased to receive my copy of "Finding Your rope entirely. She looked up from the bottom with a Way in the Bush": it is a most useful publication. I look of gleeful triumph and exclaimed "Is that all it have a comment to make on the section about taking is - what an anti-climax!" and a threw a few other a compass bearing. Paragraph 30 tells the reader how 'cracks' at George who was both baffled and bemused to adjust the compass for magnetic variation: by our reaction compared with that of the previous paragraph 33 rightly points out the risk of error by group! Some of us were less confident than Sylvia tuming the compass dial the wrong way in making and grateful for the rope as we gingerly found the such adjustment. Another possible source of error is footholds. in the arithmetic of adding or subtracting 13 degrees (or whatever the magnetic variation is) to the bearing. Next we had to push through vegetation (which in one place seemed to be all that was supporting us) The method for taking a compass bearing advocated onto a ledge below a large overhang. We had seen by Jeff Bennetts in "It" March 1984 avoids both these this from below and it looked quite scary but wasn't hazards. In using this method, you do not have to too unnerving after all. Another scramble and we tum the compass dial or do any arithmetic. Some emerged on a different section of Nibelung's members may find this method helpful so I repeat it dissected summit; this time with a fantastic view of in full:- the whole length of Mt Talaterang and the Clyde River gorge. A: MAP TO COMPASS (You know your location, your destination on the But, we couldn't linger too long as it was evident map and want to know what direction to walk in.) that, in true George tradition, we would be returning Place bottom corner of base plate on your location to the cars in darkness. It was already 3.30pm as we on the map. dropped back down into Monolith Valley - the valley Point side of base plate in direction of destination of banksias and birds, it seems. The banksias blooms on map. were quite splendid - deep orange and gold, stiff and Rotate dial so that orienting arrow is pointing shining,with many little birds singing in joyful towards the top of the map and the parallel orienting abandonment amongst them. Scattered throughout lines are lined up with the vertical grid lines on the the banksias was the delicate, white-petalled blossom map.