Johnny Boy's Walkabout Blog

20 May 2019: 3 Walks from Corin Rd – Square Rock, Gibraltar Pine Forest, Gibraltar Creek – M/R,ptX. Some short walks from Corin Rd. 1 Square Rock and beyond. 2 A walk NW from the road up into the old Gibraltar Creek pine forest area. 3 A short foray down and across Gibraltar Creek. Around 13km and 450m climb. Um … why? Um … geocaches. Maps: Corin Dam and Tindinbilla. Leader: John Evans 0417 436 877 john@johnevans.id.au . Transport: ∼$7 per person.

Further Information

Although track walking and geocaching may not interest some readers, there are good reasons for publishing this post:

• Square Rock Walking Track is a great little introduction to Namadgi National Park if you are new to Canberra or wanting to take visitors out
• who would have known that ‘Bandito Wall’ was within a few hundred metres of Corin Rd and had a lovely exit footpad route – well rock climbers and the cache owner knew
• Gibraltar Creek is a lovely spot. I walked down it on 21 Feb 15.

Summary

Distance: 15.8km | Climb: 660m | Time: 8.40am – 1.50pm (5hrs 10mins), including 15 mins of breaks plus driving between start points | Grading: M/M-R; M(10)

Photographs

Photographs are available, where you can start a large sized slideshow.

Waypoint and Track Files

Download the gpx file for this trip (if your browser does not automatically download the file, it will open the gpx file in a new window and you can then save it). To use in Google Earth, do File, Open… and select Gps or All files as the File Type.

Track Notes

Walk 1: Square Rock, Namadgi National Park – 9.8km, 390vm climb

4.6km in 1 hour into Square Rock. A couple of hazard reduction burn patches both sides of the track made us wonder how the cache would have fared. But Tank Engine caches are pretty robust.

We took in the view for a few moments, but the breeze was chilly.

We backed off a couple of hundred metres to a suitable entry point into the burnt area. The burn certainly allows the topography to be appreciated, but it’s scratchy and dirty. Walked a bit of an arc to the geocache with some very mild rock scrambling towards the end.

The cache was on the edge of the burn area, downhill was unburnt. A find and log of geocache GC84MA6 Square Stone’s Sons.

Returned to the walking track by a slightly more direct and clearer route. Then back down to the car. Drove to the next road verge park.

Walk 2: Gibraltar Creek Pine Forest, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve – 5.2km, 225vm climb

A climb up along fire trails to these caches, switching several times between what we were aiming for. I couldn’t exactly read the fire trails under some map markings, so a couple of poor navigation choices. Eventually we settled on the highest cache and found and logged GC5QAMK Gibraltar Gully.

Then down the fire trails to log GC5QANE Gibraltar Gully II.

From here, more fire trail and an off-track descent to the top of a cliff – interesting to find this in the middle of the bush here, overlooking a lovely gully. The cache description told us that this is a rock climbing site called ‘Bandito Wall’ and, indeed, there were anchor points at the top of the cliff. A find and log of GC80GG1 Gibraltar Giddiness.

Thinking that most rock climbing sites have a footpad from bottom to top, we skirted right a little and found the pad down to the creek line, a mere 450m direct to the car.

A lovely damp gully with some coloured toadstools.

Back at the car we had a quick lunch.

Walk 3: Gibraltar Creek, Namadgi National Park – 0.8km, 45vm climb

Drove to the last Corin Rd verge and wandered down through wattle at first, then Bursaria, to cross Gibraltar Creek and find and log GC7ZK99 Gurgling Gibraltar. Again, a more direct return.

On the way home I did GC7PT3P Busy Road to Home.

Good result Roger. This is the third or fourth weekly caching run we’ve done together. Happy to repeat! We certainly see some new things.

Track Maps

Track W1

Track W2 and W3

Party

2 walkers – Roger E (Marmaduke Rothschild), me JohnnyBoyACT).