Mount Gibraltar

So it was recently my one year Wedding Anniversary, so I planned a day for myself and my wife, keeping the details to myself. I surprised her with flowers,

Only to realise we didn't have a vase, but we improvised.

and we hopped in the car and began driving. I told her she could change the CD, as I know she isn't a fan of my music (I was rocking to Eluveitie), so she put on Foo Fighter's 'Wasting Light'. As we headed along the East-West Link, towards Albion Park, she guessed that we were heading up into the highlands (which was also where we got married). I told her "No, we're just going to visit your mum", stirring her up.
We got stuck behind a truck driving up Macquarie Pass, which I didn't mind because I was able to enjoy the views along there more than I usually would. I only roughly knew the way, so after turning and following the tourist road at the top of the pass leading us to right nearby the Fitzroy Inn (where we were wed), I stopped to quickly examine Google Maps for directions. We continued on until we arrived at Mount Gibraltar (Aboriginal: Bowrell). I stopped at our first lookout, Jellore Lookout. We hopped out of the car into the heat and walked a very short-way down for a look.

While the lookout wasn't that spectacular, I knew there would be two more, and more of the day planned. As we returned to the car I opened the boot, and took out some Grape Licorice, which we both enjoy before opening my backpack to give her some water. It wasn't there. I had left it in the freezer. We now had no water to drink on a scorching hot day. Things were going south fast. We enjoyed some licorice as we drove around to the next lookout.
The next lookout, Mittagong Lookout was even more disappointing, rundown and overlooking more suburbia.
We continued on, to the third and final lookout. Bowral Lookout.
We stopped here at a little covered table and seating area and I pulled out some picnic foods from the car. We enjoyed pine nut hommus with crackers while being visited by a cute Currawong and Magpie.

They got very close and the Magpie even took a little piece of pine nut from out of my hand.

We then went for a walk to the lookout, which was also suburbia, but a nicer view of a little old timey looking town.

Knowing our next destination (Nattai National Park), we looked for places where we would be able to buy some water on our way, we decided on a Coles Service Station that was along the main road. However on our arrival to the Service Station, work was being done, so I could not fill up on fuel (I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone), but they also did not sell any plain water. Only flavoured. So we drove back into town to a shopping mall where we went to Woolworths and bought a big bottle of water. We then continued on our way to Nattai National Park.
I enjoyed the views on the way there, including crossing over what I assume to be an abandoned train line which looked pretty cool. We came to dirt road which began to make my wife feel ill (as I only have a little car).

She also started getting anxious as the last time we had driven my car on dirt roads was when I had taken her out to Blue Gum Flat in Morton National Park, which was an absolute nightmare in my car. The next morning after camping I tried to take her to walk Pigeon House Mountain (as she had never done it), however the car park was absolutely packed even though we arrived very early. I began driving back down from there to maybe park on the road up, but wasn't able to in my small car. As I was doing this a car began coming up. I was wanting to turn around and just continuing checking the car park for people leaving. So I reversed to give myself some room to turn around. However the car coming up just kept coming up every time I reversed for some room. As we reached the top my wheel feel down over a drainage bit, and my car was stuck. Jennai (my wife's name) was very freaked out worried it was damaged and because we were stuck. The car that kept coming up drove by and I could see the people laughing at us, infuriating me. However some nice younger people all came rushing to help. They helped lift the car a little while it was on so as the other wheels pulled forward as it was lifted we managed to get out, checking to see that no damage had been done. I thanked everyone profusely, wiping anxious sweat from my forehead, and we decided to head home, without having walked Pigeon House, and since, Jennai had not wanted to drive it on dirt roads.

We eventually arrived at the destination according to GPS, but I could not see anywhere to go, some trails not detailing anything. I was feeling the day had been a massive failure which was upsetting as I had looked into it and they all seemed to be lovely locations. I decided to go back to one of my plans that I had scrapped and drove us again back into town where we stopped and enjoyed a nice picnic at Corbett Gardens.

We sat and ate in the shade enjoying the nice green trees, it was a very hot day and I began to feel incredibly tired and sleepy. We looked at our phones realising we had just been there enjoying each others company for 2 hours, just what the parking time limit was. We returned to the car which was scorching hot, regretting not putting up my sunscreen we drove to the bottom of Mount Gibraltar to go for a walk.

As we walked up we came to a set of rocky stairs or a path to our right. We took the path to our right.

This led around to a set of wooden steps that we took.

This led around and over a tiny wooden bridge just built for rainfall to flow under, and continued up and around until we came to and opening on our left and a big wheel to our right.

We were really enjoying the walk together and I found the opening and open cliff wall very beautiful to look at, a part of me wanting to just walk up and free climb it, Jennai warning me that "You better bloody not".
There was a sign nearby giving us some local history and information about the site.

We soon came to another even bigger opening up on our left, with a big rock in the middle with a plaque on it and a little table to the right we stopped to sit on to drink some water.

While we were drinking a felt a thud on my groin, looking down I noticed a little bee had fallen. Worried he was exhausted from the heat I filled a spoon with some water and offered him some.

I nicknamed him 'Larry'

We continued along the path that continued downward and turned right, seemingly heading back the way we came but down a separate path. Along the way we walked past old overgrown mining equipment.

The path soon split, two our right, leading back up, which I believed would take us to where we were just before or after the big wheel, and straight. We continued straight and it took us onto our path that we had began the walk on that led to the stony steps, so we walked back and up the path to the big wheel and headed back that way towards the stony steps, and we began walking up towards the lookout where we had enjoyed morning tea.

While walking I struggled a bit more than Jennai, just feeling a bit overheated, especially in my long pants. Telling myself again I need to start being more consistently active. The path continued straight up, but even so the walk itself never felt too hard, not like walking up the stairs of Sublime Point.

Finally we reached the top where the walk came up right behind an orientation table right behind where we had morning tea.

We both used the toilet facilitates and I snapped a photo of a sign providing information on Mount Gibraltar Reserve.

We watched two Kookaburras, one swooping down and grabbing a worm and the other I caught a short video of.

We headed home, going out and enjoying some Sushi for dinner, and I was just relieved that we had both had a fun and enjoyable day and that I hadn't completely butchered our one year wedding anniversary.


If you have enjoyed this post, or my blog in general, please follow it, or like my page on facebook or follow me on Instagram.

Thanks for reading! - Steven

Monolith Valley

So the year has flown by and I haven't done anywhere near as much travel or adventures as I would have liked, but many things have been going on in my life. As I mentioned in my last blog post I took part in the Refugee Challenge by 'Act for Peace' which really took its toll on me. I lost four kilograms in a week and took part while still going to work, worse than the weight lose I really felt a drop in my mental state which I'm just starting to feel better from (although the warm weather could be helping too).

So feeling like getting back into it I called my Dad to organise our next adventure, Monolith Valley, a walk we wanted to do after our hike of 'The Castle' in which we wanted to take the alternate turn off to Monolith Valley. We organised a date and set off down the coast.

So we headed inwards from Milton along the dirt roads, out past Pigeon House Mountain, through Yadboro Flat where the cows were wandering around the campsite freely, and on to Long Gully where we set up camp.

Dad getting the tent ready

While setting up camp we were visited by a very friendly bird who didn't mind coming right up close to us watching what we were doing.

We soon began our camping ritual... which involved drinking. So we quenched our thirst with two pints of beer each, before cracking open our Berry bottle of Little Fat Lamb.

We began to hear a large buzzing sound while we were drinking. Wondering what it was Dad suggested a large group of bees, while I suggested someone up in The Castle/Monolith Valley car park flying a drone. We decided to walk over and investigate, which is when we met a physio from Gerringong. He was waiting on two mates from Canberra to rock up so we could hike up to the Castle that night. My Dad couldn't believe they were planning to do it when it was so close to dusk. I noticed he'd put up a slackline, to which we was super enthusiastic telling Dad and I to have a go. My Dad didn't know what it was and I had to explain it to him, having done it quite often in 2017 when I was really into my fitness and going to Dynamite Bouldering Gym in Wollongong. Dad instantly struggled, and I found it difficult too being out of practice. I tried again determined to walk it but ended up flying off and hitting the dirt with a loud thud, a cloud of dust and rolled along the ground in a fit of laughter why they both checked that I was ok.
"Probably not the best thing to be trying after drinking" I said, brushing the dirt off.
Soon his mates from Canberra arrived and we let them get ready and head on their own adventure while we returned to our campsite. My Dad still going on about he couldn't believe anyone would go at night as it's so easy to lose the path as it is.

Soon the sun set, and we lit our fire as we cracked open another pint and began cooking dinner.

That night we were again visited by my friend the Possum who visited us the last two times we were there.

We drank into the night until it was time for bed, where unlike last time  there was no howling gale of wind keeping me up, only Dad's snoring keeping me awake all night.

Morning came and we packed our camping gear away and set off.

The start of the walk wasn't as hard as I had anticipated as it'd been over 4 months since I had done any exercise (besides working a physical job), while last time we went I had been jogging, doing push ups, sit ups, chin ups, bike riding and swimming. However as we started going uphill I got hot very fast and as it was freezing I had worn my jumper which I soon took off.

We saw more wildlife this time, passing 3 Lyrebirds (all of which ran off too fast for a picture) and saw at least two Wallabies.

Working in Bush Regeneration currently I kept looking at plants I didn't know or found interesting along the way as I had done this walk before twice now so I found myself taking in new things I hadn't noticed my previous times here.

We soon reached the base of the Castle after about an hour of walking up hill where the trail becomes smaller, and involves much more scrambling.

Walking up to the base

Looking over the Bush from the Base

We continued the walk which is mostly detailed in my Castle post, which you can read here to stop me having to rehash it all.

However we not too long after the base ran into the 3 guys from the night before who'd camped on top coming down. They said they'd had a good time and got there fine and had a great view of the eclipse that had occurred early that morning (which we had missed). We said our farewells and continued hiking the trail until we reached the branch in our destination.

Excited to finally reach a new area of the walk, we took a left turn this time and headed off through the slightly overgrown path towards Monolith Valley, continuing the arduous uphill walk.

It wasn't too long a walk before we reached our first sign post.

Deciding to extend our walk we decided we'd better head downhill to Coyoyo Creek even though we knew it was going to be additional effort walking back uphill.

Boulder to the right of the sign post

We the walk down started to flatten out we noticed a toilet block, looking pretty newly constructed which we were shocked to see and we stopped for a little to have a quick snack before exploring around Coyoyo Creek which seemed like it was a point for people doing various hikes in the area to camp around.

Continuing past the spot featured above the area opens up on a cliff face over looking the whole valley on the other side of the Castle.

Coyoyo Creek Lookout, Pigeon House on the right in background

Jumper back on after stopping, instantly freezing

We continued to explore around, finding a trail leading down to what I suppose was meant to be 'Coyoyo Creek'

Guess some people would rather sleep under a rock

Standing in the dried up Creek

We soon headed back up where we both instantly started having horrendous leg cramps, realising that we truly were both a bit out of shape (I have no excuse, my Dad however was 64, 65 in exactly a weeks time).

On the way up I couldn't help snap this photo of a tree with markings that resembled a face!

I am Groot?

We reached the signpost, sore and tired but pressed onwards to Monolith Valley.

We continued our way around, soon walking past a group of 3 who'd gotten lost and taken the wrong path. They reached this area:

and instead of going across they followed that path right, leading around in a circle, whilst Dad and I investigated both paths to take before noticing a stack of rocks (known by some as Cairns) that denote the way.

We soon spotted a sign in the distance walking up close we saw that Monolith Valley was close by.

We continued up past the sign climbing up a bit (that really strained my muscles by this time of the hike). On top the path continued on again, for what probably wasn't a huge amount of time, but felt like it to my legs.

We soon bumped into 3 older males and began talking as they had camped at Long Gully with us (the only other people there) and had left very early in the morning so had done the Castle (The same day) before heading to Monolith Valley and also passed the 3 guys we'd met from the night before.

We then climbed up a little section.

Which again was nothing compared to the climbing to get up the Castle, and sure felt better than climbing frayed rope in a howling gale. After this point you are pretty much at the top, and you can see the fantastic rock formations all the way to a clearing.

We stopped and enjoyed our last bits of food, while Dad didn't want to go any further I said I wanted to investigate and see if any more came after this and there was really no clear indication that this was 'Monolith Valley' so after eating I ran off, quickly down a path just to suss out if it was worth continuing ahead as we said we wanted to head back no later than 2pm and it was already 1:10pm.

Soon it was clear that from that point on it was truly the road less traveled.

I ran down the path through the bush pushing onwards to see what was ahead, past some caves before coming to a clearing again with yet another knocked over sign, unsure of which way was which.

I just continued on past this sign running for another 5 minutes before I decided the whole area was probably Monolith Valley, and these extra walks were to other mountains to climb, such as Mt Owen, Mt Cole, Shrouded Gods, Seven Gods Pinnacle and 'Natural Arch'. Knowing we didn't have the time, or equipment I ran back to bump into the 3 people we had previously encountered lost and my Dad, coming down the trial.

"Good luck." I said before explaining that it just leads to other mountains. They decided to walk down a bit further themselves before shortly coming back and heading home while Dad and I rested at the clearing still admiring the rock formations.

We too soon headed home, overtaking them we relentlessly walked, legs and feet killing we didn't stop or slow until we had reached Dads van to head home.

The walk was great, beautiful. But left me frustrated as my spirit of adventure leaves me determined to one day make it to the top of all those other mountains. But I guess it's better to be determined rather than apathetic. I have also been inspired lately to get back into film. Which was an old passion of mine that I had abandoned more than 6 years ago, so I'm trying to convince friends to get into doing that again. In the mean time however I'll try and be a bit more active, get back out into nature and have some adventures.

If you have enjoyed this post, or my blog in general, please follow it, or like my page on facebook or follow me on Instagram.

Thanks for reading! - Steven