Grover

Being the school holidays I took last Thursday and Friday off and went camping with David (Grover only has two seats so Chels and Mum had to stay behind). We drove up to Newnes State Forest near Lithgow. Starting off from the Zigzag railway turn off my first mistake was to not 'zero-ise' (or take note of) the odometer. That meant the great '4WD Treks close to Sydney' book we were consulting for track guidance was next to useless. Once off road and into the forest there were tracks all over the place and we quickly got disorientated. Our fallback was the GPS but I'd forgotten to load the waypoints for this particular trek in it - so we basically just bumbled about for a bit.

Next stop was the Glow Worm tunnel in Wollemi National Park. It's a disused railway tunnel (closed in 1932) that contains thousands of Glow Worms (not sure why I feel compelled to type that in Upper Case). The tunnel is about 600 metres long and in the middle it's dark - pitch dark. Stand there for a minute or so and all of a sudden you start to see tons of Glow Worms covering the walls of the tunnel. It's an amazing site - all caused by the chemical reaction between oxygen and a gnat's bottom. Having had our fill of the wonders of nature it was time to find a campsite for the night. We chose a spot just outside of the NP (so back in Newnes SF). It was a lovely spot - no other campers, no facilities, no nothing. Just how we like it.

Dave did his best to start the campfire. On our last camping trip I'd used a bit of Shellite (White Spirit) to 'help things along a bit'. The resulting conflagration as Dave pressed the figurative ignition button has left him a bit wary. It was you might say (for Dave) a bit of an 'in your face' experience. This time though no accelerants were used so starting was a bit of a chore (it had rained a fair bit recently). Eventually however we got a nice fire going - by which stage he was so knackered he was ready to call it a night. We did do a bit of star gazing however - the Milky Way looks awesome away from the light pollution of Sydney. We saw plenty of satellites whiz overhead (it's wrong to wish on space hardware apparently) but I did see a real 'shooting star' as well.

Next morning we de-camped (is that a bit like de-frocked? - more double entendres that you can poke a Nazi Pontiff at). We eventually found 'The Lost City' - which was certainly worth seeing. It's a formation of eroded rocks that if you were a dehydrated rum-crazed ex-convict explorer with a vivid imagination in the early 1800's you might just think was an ancient city, made out of rock. We then wound out along Blackfellows Hand Trail until we reached the Aboriginal rock art (hand paintings) in the caves at Blackfellow's Hand Rock. An amazingly literal name if ever I've heard one - right up there with the Great Sandy Desert and The Snowy Mountains. Nice one.

Wandering around there for a bit we left Grover's engine running as it didn't seem like such a good place to break down. It had that 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' feel about it. No, not Edwardian school girls running around the place, more foreboding spookiness (maybe I just watch too much Scooby Doo - it's hard not to in our house). Next stop was the Wolgan Gap which provides an awesome view down into the Wolgan Valley. Carefully driving down the steep hill into the valley we were then greeted with around 25KM of corrugated track (more of which shortly) all the way to our destination - Newnes. Newnes is the site of an abandoned shale mining operation that was built by the Commonwealth Oil Corporation in the late 1800's. To be honest there's not a whole lot there - a bit of industrial 'old stuff' - slowly decomposing back into the ground. This might float your boat if you are really into old industrial guff but frankly coming from South Wales it's hardly awe inspiring - there were probably older bits of crap in my garden when I was a kid!

But did we have a good time? Absolutely. We've seen things in that short space of time that few people living only an hour or so away will ever see - thanks to a 34 year old heap of Birmabright, steel and rubber. The photos are HERE (under 2010 funnily enough).