The Local Adventures of Worleybird

Australia day 26th of January 2010.

Just a short report for the moment with some pics.  I’ll explain bit more later.

Went up for a quick look at Rosewood creek canyon.  The creek runs off Dorrigo plateau and drops about 400m in a 2 km.  For the section we ran it was mostly walking/jumping the drops with two large abseils of about 50-60m each.  Some nice gorge sections and some great jumps.  Beautiful spot and was unbelievably warm!!  I get really cold normally but I spent most of the day in just shorts and thermals.  Canyoning doesn’t get much better.

Enjoy the pics!!

Stephen

This is just a short report of my field trip to Heron Island in October with uni.

I drove up to Gladstone by myself with the intention of trying to catch a Barra in lake Awoonga while I was there. I’ll write up a seperate report for that in the kayak fishing section!!

After a 12 hour drive up to Gladstone, and a days rest, I jumped on the boat with the rest of the crew and we headed off on the 2.5 hour journey to Heron Island. The Island sits about 75km offshore to the NE of Gladstone. The boat ride was long and choppy and many got sick. I suffer from seasickness easily so i had taken some “kwells” and so wasn’t sick at all!! We arrived at the Island got unpacked, had an orientation to the Heron Island Research Centre and then had our first lectures. We were going to be doing a lot of study, lectures, pracs, assignments and exams during our 8 day stay so we were all keen to get in a bit of diving any chance we could get and we were quick to grab the snorkeling gear as soon as we were done for the day and any other free time we had. We got up for a snorkel at 5am most mornings to fit it in before breakfast. With all the activity and early mornings and late nights I was getting more and more tired by the end of the week!!

Throughout the week we had a lot of learning to be done but it was enjoyable learning as the course was very interesting and I’m sure we all came out knowing a lot more about coral reefs than when we came.

I had my camera on me pretty much all the time while on the island (except when i was sleeping, or showering etc cause that would be weird!!). This meant that i had a myriad of Photo’s to go through and edit/cull during the trip. While on the trip I decided it might be an idea to have a video made from all the photos to show at the end of the trip. So during one of the free time sections at the end of the week i put together a video. We showed it on the last night after everything was done and it was a good wrap up to the week. Here’s the vid below. It contains a lot of photos in a short time and has some ‘IN’ jokes you may not get but enjoy. If you want a closer look at the pics, there’s some posted below too!

I did a lot of underwater photography stuff while on the island and really enjoyed trying to get close to critters to get the pics. I really couldn’t get enough of the diving and we did it pretty much everyday at least!! I also got some terrestrial pics that I was happy with as well. I was using my ‘olympus 8000 tough’ camera. It’s 10m waterproof (which i tested), 2m shockproof, 12 megapix, and I reckon it takes pretty good pics for a point and shoot type camera. It’s very handy as you can just carry it around and not worry about dropping it or getting it wet and you don’t have to worry about an underwater case. You can go straight from shooting pics on land and then dive in the water!! I wouldn’t use it for scuba diving though as it’s only 10m waterproof!!

Anyway back to the trip. There was a gastro outbreak while we were on the island which made things a bit more interesting (it’s not the time you want to be sick!!) but i didn’t get it.

We also went on a couple of boat snorkels on the outside of the reef as well as did a few surveys out on the reef flat. There was something new and interesting everyday and I was never really bored (which is pretty good, considering we were doing uni!!).

After 8 days it was finally time to go home and we jumped on the boat and the trip was far quicker and smoother with less sickness. We arrived back in Gladstone and everyone began to go their separate ways, except me!!! My car, which had been parked in secure parking at the wharf, had a flat battery and wouldn’t even clutch start!! Luckily, with the help of some other guys from the trip, I was able to jump start the car and i was off home………..Well at least for 30 mins. I decided to camp at the Boyne river on my way, to get some rest for the big drive the next day, and so spent the night in a fairly wet swag but still got a good nights sleep. It took another 12 hours home in one day and i was back to Sawtell. Home at last (which my pregnant wife was quite happy about!!!).

Some more pics below.

Smile for the camera!!

and it's not even Christmas!!

I can seeeeee youuuuuu!

Well this post should have been a paddling report but the day didn’t go to plan but did present an opportunity do some exploring that I’d been keen to do for a while.

 
The day started at 6:50am when I left Sawtell for Platypus flats on the nymboida river. The plan was to meet a mate Tom (a fellow rafting guide who had camped up there overnight with his family) to run safety for his raft which would be holding various blood relatives, one of which was celebrating being a year older than last year.

When I arrived at 8:45am I was promptly informed that we had a slight problem! A number of thoughts immediately went through my head……’There’s not enough paddles’ ‘The pfd’s don’t fit’ ‘Tom forgot the raft’ ‘The river ran out’ ‘The platypuses have had too many puggles and blocked up the rapids’……but it was none of these!! The problem was that Tom had been up all night vomiting and being generally not asleep or well!

We decided that it would be the smart thing to leave the paddling for another day, and contrary to previous trends and precedence we opted for the smart choice. This left me 2 hours and 800 vertical meters from home with no-one to paddle the river with me.

So having already made the trip up the hill i decided to have an explore  at  a couple put ins I’ve been wanting to check out.  

1st I had a look at access to the nymboida from the norm jolly grove above the beilsdown river.  I couldn’t really find a track down to the river and having no map the only sensible thing to do was just keep going down hill.  So I found a little creek and followed it for over an hour from where it had no water to where it spilled over a 10m waterfall into the nymboida river.  Was i nice hike in the end.  Some cool spots and had lunch on some rocks in the middle of the nymbo.  Also came upon a lyre bird really close and it freaked out and started screaming like a person as it flew off, kinda freaky.  

The baby creek starts to carry some water!

The nymbo.

Relaxing spot for a rest and lunch!

Hundreds of years of wood covered in moss!

This one was upright and 8m around the trunk.

After 3hrs and only 4 leaches I was back at my car and off to my next mission.

I’ve been wanting to get to cedar falls for a while to check out a way of puting into rosewood creek with our kayaks.  It’s supposed to be a great run through almost untouched old growth forest.  I decided to run the track as it was 3pm and the track was supposed to be a 3.5hr walk.  The track is great!  I basically drops you down a ridge so that you end up at the base of cedar falls which is about half way down the dorrigo escarpment.  Basically Rosewood runs off the plateau and  drops about 200 vertical metres in nearly one go.  Here are some pics from the bottom of cedar falls which is about half way down the escarpment.

cedar falls pools

view looking up at cedar falls

from the next step down

looking down from the same spot as the last pic

There were a whole lot of fish in the pools in the middle of this nearly vertical drop don’t know whether they got UP or Down there.

Managed to find some eels!

some kind of gudgeon i think?

I managed to run back to the start in less than 30mins as it was getting dark by the time I’d finished exploring.  I also managed to get really close to two different lyre birds.  I got some video of them feeding from only metres away which I was pretty stoked with too.

So after a day that started with “we’ve got a bit of a problem”, it ended up a pretty fun day to enjoy by myself and I’m now really keen to try rosewood creek after some rain!!

worleybird

ps.  I’m still itchy as from the many ticks that became apparent over the next few days.