“We’re not like other people,” said Doug. “How so?” I asked. “Well, there was kangaroo dung everywhere beside the creek when I got water out for us to drink, and we just drank the water.”
It’s true, as a rule, we don’t worry about stuff like that. Sure, we avoid skanky pools full of cow shit, but a small creek in the middle of bushland with clear water, and we’ll drink the water without treatment. After 40 years of this practice, neither of us have ever got sick which speaks to either gut acculturation, anti-fragility, or luck. Once, on a sea kayak trip, our friends assiduously treated all the water they got from rain water tanks with a steri-pen while chomping down on Tim Tams and lollies. The point escaped me.
We’ve walked into Big Creamy Flats to hike Mount Namadgi in Namadgi National Park. Of course, simply saying “we walked into Big Creamy Flats” does not describe the walk in, which involves one kilometre walking on a mowed trail across the Bogong Creek grasslands followed by a ten kilometre bushwack. The first two kilometres is relatively easy, although, since the bridge over Bogong Creek was pulled there is a mandatory boots and even trousers off creek crossing. But there is a very old vehicle track that runs about a kilometre up Middle Creek which allows an “easing in” to the bushwacking.
For whatever reason, as you progress northwest up Middle Creek, the bushwacking gets worse. Some big boulders delay progress, not because they are large but because they are big and brushy. There are multiple side creeks to cross where the ground is boggy and thigh high thickets of sedgy grass proliferate. Somewhere around the four to five hour mark we both realise our hip flexors are tiring. That’s the thing about this kind of bush-wacking, each step is a high step, and the only people used to high stepping for hours are members of the Ministry of Silly Walks.
Our time to Big Creamy Flats seems about usual, 6 to 6.5 hours from the car, and it is wonderful to finally break out of the trees at 1500 metres to a sunny valley with ridges of granite boulders to the north and south. We have time for a mug of tea and a short laze by the tent before the sun dips below the ridges and the temperature falls.
In the morning, we walk half a kilometre around the southern edge of Big Creamy Flats until we are near a minor creek draining the ridge of Mount Namadgi. More bushwacking to the summit, until around the 1700 to 1750 metre level where the bush eases back to low sub-alpine growth and there are large granite slabs to walk up. The peaks along the boundaries of the ACT are not high enough to have true alpine terrain with easy walking. More common is a bush thrash until very near the summit.
Our initial plan had been to spend a second night camped at Big Creamy Flats and I had been looking at the ridge opposite to see what might be the best route up, but we have errands to run in Canberra before driving home and decide we will walk half way out breaking the unpleasant bushwack into two parts.
Back at the tent, we drink tea, pack up our gear and begin the walk back. It’s impossible to find the “best route” and a couple of times we end up too high, in fields of big boulders, other times, we are a little too low and mired in boggy grasslands, but, eventually we find a grassy area beside a small side creek and find a camp for the night.
The final kilometre or so of bushwacking passes relatively easily and we are back at the crossing of Middle Creek and soon after that the grasslands, Bogong Creek and the car. At a picnic bench at the car park we brew coffee, eat a second breakfast and enjoy a last view up Middle Creek to Mount Namadgi.
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