This walk was planned and led by a mate, Max S.  2 of us walked.  We left Canberra at 7am and drove to the Nursery Swamp Car Park.

Walk

We were walking by 10 to 8 and covered the 1.7km of the Nursery Swamp Walking Trail in 25 minutes to the turnoff onto the Rendezvous Creek footpad.  The pad leaves the Nursery Swamp track at a burnt marker post with new metal arrow pointing left along the NS track.  You go straight ahead on the Rendezvous Creek footpad which, after traversing a few hundred metres of swampy creek area, is marked with pink and yellow ties.  Certainly a lot better than bush bashing as I did last time.  We  reached the saddle above Rendezvous Creek at 8.50am and headed down to the Creek.  9.15am saw us down at Rendezvous Creek.  It would be pretty difficult coming the other way to find the (in this case) first marker tie.

Plenty of water in the creek flowing down a few cascades.  Excellent views to the other side, with Spot Height 1406 and the rock slabs at GR744485(GDA94) clearly identifiable.  We turned south east and followed the creek down, keeping well up the hillside till we came to open flats.

At one stage I finished photographing a stand of burnt and dead trees and nearly stepped on a snake.  A golden brown fellow in a fresh new skin and looking very fat and healthy.  We stopped for morning tea at 10am, then pressed on to the beginning of a series of side gullies which led up to a saddle south east of Spot Height 1337.  Plenty of heavy breathing as we covered the 200m up over 0.75km in 30 minutes.  From the saddle we turned ESE again up the ridge to Nursery Hill.  Another 200m climb over 1.2km in 30 minutes.

Max was a bit out on his timing for lunch, as we reached the little pile of rocks marking the top at 7 minutes to 12noon.  We got a bit excited when we saw 22 contour lines between the 1300m line and the top at 1428m, but later examination showed that the contour lines are mislabelled, rather than the top being at 1528.

Anyway, the views were certainly excellent and worth the huffing and puffing.  The top of the SW side of Rendezvous Creek was still visible and to the north west we had a great view to our last walk's top on Mt Orroral.  Mt Gudgenby was clearly visible to the south west.

12.25pm saw us hitting the road again, basically magnetic north.  Nursery Swamp was soon in view and it was a steep, but lightly vegetated walk down the hill.  We reached the western arm of Nursery Swamp at 12.50pm, crossed a bit of a bog and headed along the side of the swamp.  A black snake this time.

We covered the 3.9km back along the swamp to the morning's turnoff point in 50 minutes.  Pleasant, easy walking, but the swamp area still looks a bit sad and burnt.  We were back at the car by 2pm.

An excellent walk with some of everything.  Great company, areas I'd not been to before, a peak bagged, a couple of snakes to remind us of the summer season coming and, just as we left the car park, my first sighting of two wild dogs.

Time:  7.50am - 2pm, with 40 minutes of stops.