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Reynolds Falls on the Vale River issues from a slot canyon and falls free for more than 60m, one of the most spectacular settings of any waterfall in Tasmania. Since my first visit in the early 1980s, I have returned to the falls several times and explored its environs seeking imagery for conservation campaigns; despite advocacy by The Wilderness Society and others for more than forty years, the protection status of the entire catchment remains poor. Upstream of the falls, the river flows through a deep and steep gorge. I had only poked around the edges of the inaccessible gorge on foot, but when, some ten years ago, Mark Oates shared his dream of a descent of the entire river using packrafts and canyoning gear, I was immediately hooked. The…
[Letter of the Issue] GOING PRIVATE? Dear James, I am following on from the contributions in the recent edition on the over-development of walking tracks, and hut infrastructure privatisation. Combined with the current proposal by NSW National Parks to increase camping fees, I was struck by a worrying thought. These trends of increasing appeal to the masses, and increasing the profitability of our parks, make them ripe propositions to be sold and fully privatised. (I would argue that they are already partially privatised, given that all major projects are delivered by private contractors and not parks staff.) We only have to look at other public assets that followed the same path since the late 1980s—electricity supply, land and property information, ports, motorways, etc. Prior to the sale of these assets,…
Recently, I had just forded the Snowy River in Kosciuszko NP on my way out for a few days of backcountry skiing—the river’s frigid waters, despite being swollen with snowmelt, had thankfully remained just below testicle depth—when I got chatting with a woman about to ford back across the river. She’d only just braved the icy crossing in my direction less than half an hour earlier, so I asked why she was heading back so soon. The wind, she told me. I gathered it freaked her out. Granted, it was a blustery day. But it was nowhere near as blustery as it would be three days later, when I could barely stay upright while walking across ridgelines or while transitioning for a ski descent off Carruthers. And that, in turn,…
Abseiling Crystal Brook Falls, in Victoria’s Mt Buffalo NP, is a full-on day out. These low, late-summer flows tamed the beast, and other than a stuck rope, we enjoyed a relatively calm day by Crystal Brook’s standards. As we descended further into the depths of the gorge, we kept tabs on the several groups of nearby climbers scaling the dramatic cliffs. Even our climbers’ route back to the car was an adventure of its own. by RYAN HANSEN Sony A7R II, 16-35mm f4, 1/250s, f5, ISO 1250 I took this photo just before entering the Franklin River’s Great Ravine, the final flat water before the obstacles ahead. There are always mixed feelings at these points of an adventure; you’re trying to take in the scenery and the stillness, but knowing…
I’ve spent months of my life camping, maybe years if you add it up. In single nights and weekends, weeklong chunks and longer stints. Sometimes, when things were busy or hard, it was years between camps. Each time, after a night or two under the stars, came the realisation: I’ve really missed this. My parents started us early, taking young twins and a toddler on forays around the NSW South Coast. Their stories are mostly about how much I screamed. Of campsites emptying overnight, friends’ tents vanishing as I howled. The photos are of brown canvas tents, Holdens and Stubbies shorts, the three girls with matching helmets of blonde hair. I eventually stopped screaming and set off on my own, and camping became about travel and adventure: across the Australian…
Two long and hard days crossing over a high and technical pass, with a couple of dozen people whose safety I was ultimately responsible for, had left me feeling a little busted; I was keen to find an early camp where we could all rest and recover. Coming off the chaotic jumble of the glacier, meandering down through ancient moraines and boulder fields, I’d already passed up two possibilities. Both were flat and well supplied with water, but neither had lived up to my, some would say, fussy standards. One had too much bare, muddy soil exposed, and the other—an expansive snooker-table-flat grassy, glacial terrace—was exposed to the anabatic winds that would inevitably develop as the fine day warmed. It was our first sunny day since the beginning of the…
