With one hand, I balanced my pack on my
head, released my grip on the rock walls of the steep red rock gorge
and prepared to swim 200 metres to the end of the deep, narrow
defile. Only problem is, I immediately sank, gulped in a lungful of
water and, choking and spluttering kicked hard with my legs, flung
the now soaked pack back up onto the rock ledge and gasped out "well,
that didn't go quite as planned."
We were at the western end of
Umbrawarra Gorge having walked along the plateau top from the
campground to a narrow, shallow side gorge that disgorged a small
amount of water out into the main flow of this tributary of Stray
Creek. A half hours walk upstream through dense stands of pandanus,
flaking paperbark and knee high native grasses had led to this long
narrow stretch of gorge filled with clear green water and flanked on
either side by steep red sandstone walls worn smooth by annual
floods.
We had arrived at the small campground
in Umbrawarra Gorge Nature Park on a Thursday afternoon with just
enough time before dark to wander up to the first two pools. There
are some "established" rock climbs on the walls of the
gorge above the first two pools, although in this instance,
established may simply mean someone once climbed a few lines here and
gave them names. There are no bolts, no anchors, and, on many of the
routes, precious few gear placements. After a few weeks however, of
staring at climbable rock where climbing is banned, we were keen to
climb at least a few pitches, despite feeling desperately out of
shape for tackling Australian sandbags.
Top-roping an Umbrawarra Route
It was around 11.00 am the next day
when we could climb as we needed to wait for the gorge walls to come
into the shade. Climbing in the sun is completely out of the
question as you literally could fry an egg on the sandstone walls.
The tops of the walls roll back and are littered with loose blocks,
large and small, so we were limited to climbing routes that were (a)
within our rather mediocre current grade level; and (b) had a nearby
tree anchor. This left us with three routes. Doug led one nice
jagged crack climb, which enabled us to top-rope another steep and
fun face climb. We also managed to top-rope a rather unusual route
up a series of overhanging horizontal flakes and roofs. This one had
a huge high-step onto a steep roof above that was just too high a
step for my old weak body and I had to do a pull-up to get my foot
onto the crucial hold. The final move was a classic mantle onto a
small ledge. It was fun to be climbing again, and we climbed all the
routes a couple of times, sucking the joy out of them. A small crowd
of early weekenders had gathered at the base and I heard the voice of
a small child say "she's stuck," as I paused at the mantel
move. "Not stuck," I called down, "just temporarily
paused."
Next day we decided to walk up the
gorge to the end, which, according to our road map (how I longed for
a real topographic map) was about 4 or 5 km. We got a somewhat
delayed start as Doug had started out in a pair of very cheap, and
rather nasty, river sandals and had discovered (again) that they were
very poor quality and he was slipping and sliding on the boulders in
the gorge bed. It was obvious he would sprain an ankle, twist a
knee, or fracture a couple of femurs should he continue so he went
back for better footwear. I dawdled around, swimming in a deep pool
in the gorge floor and eventually, as I abhor being still, walking
back to meet him.
Rock slabs Umbrawarra Gorge
The gorge is perhaps 100 metres high at
its highest point. At the eastern end, it emerges from the
surrounding dry savannah plains and rapidly increases in depth. The
bottom is lined with large river rocks, some still featuring the
ripples of an ancient sea, others washed smooth by wet season floods
and inordinately slippery, particularly if your shoes are wet or
sandy. Progress is slow as you cross from one side of the river to
the other scrambling over boulders, along short sections of sandy
beach, and up and down ledges of red river rock. Large burled
paperbarks line wider sections of the gorge and spiky pandanus palms
overhang the green waters.
The further you go, the more isolated you
feel, as the water gets clearer and deeper, the vegetation greener
and more lush with pockets of ferns and sweet green grasses. Fig
trees cling improbably to the gorge walls and send down thin snaking
roots seeking water. The gorge twists and winds sinuously with side
gorges running in at regular intervals. About an hour from the
eastern end, the gorge makes a 90 degree bend at a deep sandy pool
and the river runs under a tunnel of rock with a deep resonating
gurgle. The red rock cliffs contrast strongly with the green water,
and the entire gorge is eerily silent in this land where the screech
of raucous birds normally runs through day and night.
Quiet in the gorge
We stopped for lunch on a big shady
rock ledge under an overhanging arch beside a deep pool at around
2.00 pm, realising that we would now have to turn around without
reaching the end of the gorge. After lunch, I built a big rock cairn
in the middle of the creek, and Doug built one on our lunch ledge on
the north side of the river. We were already planning to come down
from the western end the next day and wanted to see how close to the
end of the gorge we were.
Next morning, we started earlier but I
tossed out the dry bag I was carrying for my pack. The three pools
we could not circumvent the day before had reached only, at their
deepest point, my neck and I had been able to balance my pack on my
head, the dry bag seemed superfluous. Luckily, Doug still carried
his small dry bag in his pack.
An easy pool to keep a pack dry
We hiked straight up hill from the
campground to the plateau top and headed west along the rim of the
gorge. One section, above the second pool, is for women only,
according to the indigenous people who own this land, so Doug went
well back from the gorge walls here to stay out of this culturally
sensitive area. The flat plateau top is actually cross-hatched by
shallow perpendicular gorges so every 10 to 20 minutes, you dip down
into a gully and out the other side. There had been a recent grass
fire so the ground was open for walking, only stunted eucalpyts
remaining on the plateau top. The ground is so stony that I wondered
how, or why, this land was used to run cattle, which surely must have
trouble eking out sufficient food. There were flocks of birds in the
trees, and the sandy ground between rocks was criss-crossed with
animal tracks, but we saw no other living things.
After about an hour and a half, the
land began to slope down, and wandering out to the edge of the gorge,
we could see the cliffs, while still continuing, decreasing in
height. Just shy of two hours, we dropped into the shallow side
gorge and eased out into the main gorge, the cliffs abruptly gone,
the river spreading out over 100 metres and dense with native
grasses, paperbarks and pandanus. We had reached the end. A half
hour walking upstream as the gorge walls rose steadily beside us and
we were at the long deep pool that marks this western end of the
gorge.
Doug looking small among big blocks
When we had both nearly drowned trying
to balance our packs on our heads and swim with one arm, we realised
that, if we were going to continue upstream and back to the
campground we were just going to have to get everything wet. We
stored our crucial gear in Doug's small dry bag, stuffed this into
his pack, and, floating our packs with one hand, we swam with the
other upstream, through the narrow gorge, past steep, smooth walls,
and finally, heaved our now very heavy packs out onto a sandy bench
at the eastern end. We were both reading a book by Nassim Nicholas
Taleb (the author of The Black Swan) called Antifragile in which he
argues that certain domains, and humans in general require
difficulties to prosper. "We are having an "antifragile"
experience, we joked to each other as we poured water from our packs
and wrung out our dripping clothes and shoes.
Half an hour upstream, after some easy
boulder hopping and ledge walking, I pushed through tangled paperbark
out into the river bed and confronted a large cairn right in the
middle of the river. On the north bank, another cairn was stacked
under a rock overhang. I laughed out loud at the serendipity of it.
We stripped off our wet clothes, spread them out in the sun on the
southern bank, and lunched at our "usual" ledge naked and
in the shade.
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