Everyone who walks into the heart of the Budawangs knows that time quickly becomes an irrelevance. A few kilometres might take an hour or a day and it is imperative that the journey becomes the experience, else you risk being disappointed by long hours of struggle broken by only the briefest of high points.
With only a short break in a rainy spring, we planned two days to walk into Hidden Valley and climb Mount Sturgiss. Just, but not quite, long enough, and if I could walk back in time I would take one more day for this trip.
Sassafras, which is merely a cluster of small holdings, is quickly passed as you travel between Nowra and Braidwood with no sign that to the south, the vast wilderness of the Budawang lies hidden in folds of the country. There is no real information on the NSW NPWS website and even the guidebook says nothing much about how to find the old Endrick River Fire Trail. However, the access road (which passes through private property) is exactly where shown on the topographic map, about 4 km east of Gretas Road (access to the Ettrema Tops fire trail). And, there is a sign on the gate diagramming access to the Endrick River fire trail but the gate seems to be always open and the sign hidden from view.
Many people cycle the Endrick River fire trail, at least to the junction with the Folly Point trail or down to the Vines, but we opted to walk. The starting elevation is about 700 metres and the junction with the Styles Valley trail is about 700 metres so the fire trail is pretty flat with only a few undulations. Again, if I could walk back in time I might also ride my mountain bike in, but that can be pretty awkward with an overnight pack. In any event, I enjoy walking and, as all the scrub is burnt, the walk is fairly scenic. We detoured to the top of Bhundoo Hill on the way in, an extra 10 metres of elevation gain and had a distant view of Point Perpendicular with the lighthouse shining bright white. The view also encompasses the Clyde River Gorge and the Tianjara Plateau to the east.
Just south of Newhaven Gap, the track passes close to the western escarpment of the Clyde River gorge and there are tantalising views of the escarpment cliffs and the Clyde River 400 metres below. As the trail descends gently down Strang Gully the scenery becomes typical Budawangs, grassy plains, short pagoda cliffs, creeks running clear over sandstone slabs and wildflowers everywhere. Suddenly the trail descends slightly to the Vines, a deep rainforest pocket, once the place of a sawmill, now a dappled mix of sun filtering through tall trees, moss covered ground and tree ferns.
A cairn marks the foot-pad that descends southeast through the valley defined by Quilty and Sturgiss Mountains. This is where the real Budawangs experience starts, clambering over and under fallen trees, pushing through thick acacia and other fire regrowth, travel slows, time becomes meaningless.
Once past the Quilty turn-off, also marked by a small cairn, the trail descends to parallel the head of Kilpatrick Creek for a couple of kilometers. There is an old road bed which is likely the only thing that has kept this route navigable by walkers, but the road bed is gradually falling away or being overgrown by dense regrowth. In one place we had to push through tall thickets of Incense Plants (Calomeria amarnthoides) which had grown in an explosion of size and density making us think of the John Wyndham classic, Day Of The Triffids.
After the track gains about 30 metres of elevation and continues south on a 700 metre plateau it is very easy to lose any sign of human passage altogether. In late 2021 the only thing we noted was some faint evidence of passage through robust and springy acacia regrowth that had disappeared by the next day. Acacia is like that, wiry and tenacious. We followed the track well enough until we crossed the head of Kirkpatrick Creek and then we lost it completely. We did, however, find a small clearing of low grass perfect for a campsite and within thrashing distance of water down a small creek.
After setting up camp and brewing some tea, Doug and I both set off on different reconnaissance trips. I headed off on an ESE bearing hoping to find, if not the Hidden Valley track, at least an easy bushwack route – no on both counts. Doug arduously retraced our steps, or tried to, hoping to locate the track we had previously lost which would take us back out the next day. He had some moderate success but only modest as by the time we came to follow the track out the next day we had again lost it entirely. He did, however, stumble upon the tall tree fern with HV carved in the trunk that marks the Hidden Valley-Styles Creek junction; the old campsite at this spot now shrunk to only accommodate one tent and surrounded by vigorous regrowth.
Thanks to an amazingly comfortable tent site, I slept so well that I bounded out of bed around 5.30 am the next morning; but, then again, I am one of those people who almost always bounds out of bed early anyway. After jugs of coffee, we started by trying to follow the foot pad that Doug had found the previous night to the tree fern marker but lost it within minutes and then spent the next 10 to 15 minutes trying to find the tree fern in the vain hope that a distinctive track would materialise to lead us up to Hidden Valley.
We did find the tree fern again; I looked up from our latest compass bearing to see it perfectly in-line with the direction of travel arrow on the compass and we did find a bit of a pad that descended perhaps 10 metres to a dry creekbed where we tried, poorly it turns out, to mark the faint pad we had just followed. Fortuitously, walking uphill from the flats, the vegetation thinned and became quite manageable, and on a vague shoulder on the ridge we found a faint foot pad that led north past short cliffs, seeps and a camping cave to the pass that grants access to Hidden Valley.
Hidden Valley is a magical place. A small enclave, perhaps a kilometre in length surrounded by the escarpment of the sprawling Sturgiss Mountain. Impossibly green along the valley bottom where a swampy stream runs, fringed by eucalypts, and framed all around by terraced cliffs. We had some information that the “trail” was on the west side of the valley although there was scant evidence of anything, travel was relatively easy, however and we were soon near the height of land and looking east across the valley to a distinct cave, likely Dark Brothers Cave (marked incorrectly on the topographic map).
The information I had gleaned from the guidebook and various other trip reports indicated that the scramble route up Sturgiss Mountain was 100 metres or so north of Dark Brothers Cave and we initially looked that way. Doug, however, had studied the satellite imagery and thought the likely route was to the south, so we made the classic mistake of turning back too soon and spent a deal of time thrashing along the cliff line to the south. When no scramble route was found, we again went north, and, tangled in undergrowth and overgrowth we found a lone cairn, which with more scratching through the bush led upwards to a series of ledges and eventually a rusty chain hanging down a seepy chimney section. Another thrutch up this and more ledge traversing and climbing and we popped out on top of the large plateau that makes up Sturgiss Mountain.
And that is when we really wished we had an extra day as the plateau of Sturgiss Mountain revealed the most amazing views of the Budawangs and it would have been ideal to have the time to walk right to the south end of the plateau. As it was, we had to be content with scrambling up to a high point with a big cairn and a sizeable dead eucalypt and, despite the somewhat grizzly, grey weather, amazing views in all directions.
The rest, of course, is the denouement, but includes its own adventures. After a too short stay on the plateau, we descended back to camp in less than half the time, but, could not find the track past the tree fern so endured the obligatory acacia thrash to camp. After some lunch and tea, we packed up and with dispiriting rapidity lost the track we had followed from Kilpatrick Creek and expended too much time, energy and clothing (ripped) pushing through entangled regrowth. Near the point of despair that we would ever find the trail again, I stumbled out onto the track just where it descends down into Kilpatrick Creek. After that sojourn, the overgrown track felt like a highway.
At Camping Rock Creek we sat in the sun by a small cascade on the creek among wildflowers and reflected on another Budawang trip. “Did you enjoy it?” Doug asked, and, strangely enough, despite the frustration of watching as trails in the Budawangs deteriorate to the point of complete annihilation, I realised that Budawang time is a good time. “Yes,” I said quietly, “I really did.”
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