Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Neurum Creek Bush Retreat
To get two nights away, we joined the great Friday get away northbound on the Bruce Highway at 4. Still, on reflection, when you are sat there under the stars, tents are up, after a good steak, beer in hand, under the stars by 7.30, it all seems worth it.

Some were up early the next morning in an attempt to find platypus in the creek, sadly to no avail. Although they are not especially shy, they are still quite rare. Like most Australian creatures, they are not very resistant to pollution and have fickle breeding habits.

Saturday morning we attempted to scramble through “spider gorge” to the top of a range of hills behind the campsite. From the bottom, from the cleared areas, it looks like you could scramble up them in half an hour. Once you get in them, the vegetation is so dense and the gorge so steep that can’t even tell which of them you are climbing up. You also spent half your time ducking and weaving through masses of spider webs.

After about two hours climbing and scrambling up – we hadn’t reached the top and had no idea of much further there was to go. There was no way to get out of the gorge without a machete and no way of seeing more than 15 metres further up. It was pretty hot and we were running out of water, energy and enthusiasm so we decided to turn around. Chatting with the owners back at the campsite office, we found out that you can get to the top (ie there are no huge cascades/waterfalls) and traverse back down along one of the ridges. With kids that would take you most of a day, so we will have to go back in the winter when it is cooler.

It is recommended that you take ½ litre of water per person, per hour when walking in the summer. I am not quite sure how that works out – eleven of us, walking for 5 hours, would have needed to take 27 ½ litres of water for a full day’s walk! Definitely a winter pursuit.

The gorge was virtually pristine, probably with only a handful of visitors each month. There were vine thickets, palms, gums, fungi and the some amazing examples of staghorn ferns: a landscaper would have been proud. Unfortunately, we didn’t spot any snakes; only a huge goanna. It is nice to get off the beaten track every once in a while.

To cool off in the afternoon we headed down to the creek for a swim. No crocs here, only platypus and turtles. (Though we saw neither.)

Sunday was similar format: walk in the morning and swim in the afternoon. Not that walking in the morning made any difference – it was still about 35° even at 10am. This time we walked up behind the campsite for views eastwards over the northern end of the D’Aguilar Range.

Swimming in the afternoon down at the creek again for a couple of hours. Again no platypus, but that probably had something to do with the noise of the kids.

3pm signalled time to pack up and sit in the traffic again, this time southbound on the Bruce Highway.

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