Happy walkers at morning tea at the end of the Nursery Swamp Walking Track
Saturday 17 June: Nursery Swamp and Rendezvous Creek – M/E-M. Walk some old favourite tracks and routes. Visit Nursery Swamp walking all on track. Nursery Swamp is one of the outstanding fens of its type on the Australian mainland. A ‘fen’ is a wetland where sedge plants grow closely together leaving no areas of open water. Return to Nursery Creek and walk the route across and down to Rendezvous Creek. 1km down the creek are cascades. A geocache at each destination. Around 15km and 600m climb. Map: Rendezvous Creek. Leader: John Evans 0417 436 877 john@johnevans.id.au . Transport: ∼$10 per person.
GC62X5V Basil gets bogged, GC5WH5C Rendezvous Cascades
Summary
Distance: 17.1km | Climb: 450m | Time: 8.45am – 2.45pm (6hrs), including 55 mins of breaks/caching time | Grading: L/E-M; M(10)
Photographs
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Waypoint and Track Files
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Track Notes
This was a gentle stroll designed to attract a great friend of mine back onto the trail but, alas, other wombat-saving commitments intervened. Instead this ageing introvert enjoyed some great company from new and old friends and came home satisfied with both geocaches found. To boot, we enjoyed a nice day in the Namadgi.
We met at my old folks home at 8am, the happy conversation and collection of vehicles causing the curtains to part at the next door villa. 45mins to drive from the deep south of Canberra (Gordon) to the Nursery Swamp car park and shake out ready to walk. I was appreciative of the sealed road, as I have trouble with my bush vehicle and had to take the town car.
The day was overcast, but 7ºC is a nice walking temperature for the second week of winter. The sun came out later and we probably enjoyed a better day than in Canberra.
35 minutes for the 2km climb to the Nursery Swamp Walking Track saddle where we turned SE to cross Nursery Creek. Another 32 minutes and 2.4km saw us down at the end of the marked track, at an informative sign about Nursery Swamp and two benches overlooking a lovely reach of the swamp. Nearby, of course, was geocache GC62X5V Basil gets bogged and I was able to interest a couple from the party to join me on the search. Much to my amazement (as I struggle to find any caches at difficulty =2) I found this difficulty = 2.5 cache myself. Duly logged and maybe Ming is interested in the dark side of geocaching 🙂 .
A quick morning tea for the errants, then back along the NSWT to the point where Rob H turns west for the few hundred metres across to the blue paint marked start of the footpad over to Rendezvous Creek. This we walked, to find a rogaining/orientiring marker and a tape accompanying the blue paint.
I’m not a good footpad navigator and would rather be off-track in the scrub where route finding errors are insignificant. But today I had Jared, who kept me on the straight and narrow (Matthew 7:13-14 😆 ) . He got me back on track several times! 2.5km and 50mins saw us across to the saddle, down and across Rendezvous Creek at a pretty creek flat and to the fireplace on the other side.
Here we picked up the old vehicle track that goes SE paralleling the creek and wandered along it for 1km in 15mins to find a nice lunch spot.
Again, 4 party members sacrificed lunch time and joined me to go back along the track and down to the Rendezvous Creek cascades to help me find and log geocache GC5WH5C Rendezvous Cascades. Our reward was a great view down to the cascades. We returned to the lunch spot and again had a quick lunch.
So this was the extent of our little walk and we left at 12.30pm to return the way we came in.
We made it back to a point along the Rendezvous Creek footpad by 1.20pm, so there was the option to skip across Nursery Creek to the indigenous rock art. Most of us chose to go, although a titanium hip and accompanying walker chose the more direct route back to the cars. I felt it appropriate to explain that the splitting of a party can be the start of disaster, but the two who walked out are super experienced walkers and have been in the bush much longer than I have. So all good.
Our side trip took us 300m to the NE to the Nursery Creek indigenous rock art. Closing in, voices guided us and we met two walkers there. I love and respect these sites.
A footpad led us out via the signage and visitors book. From there we tracked SE back to the main footpad. Back at the blue paint start marker, we went NE via the pig trap to rejoin the NSWT and so back down to the cars.
Great little trip. Thanks folks for accompanying me and enjoying the day.
Track Maps
Party
12 walkers – Virginia B, Isaac de R, Michael de R, Jared H, Ming L, Stephen M, Julie M, Quentin M, Matthew O, Lisa Q, Terence U, me.