Camping in Budawang NP
3–5 August 2023
I knew this walk was going to challenge me and whilst I didn’t reach my objective I was happy with what I experienced, how far I got, and my photos.
I’d have photos of the Budawangs on my TV screensaver for months, salivating at the views from The Castle. After examining maps and reading others’ accounts of their trips I was pretty sure The Castle was unachievable for me. I was happy to settle for reaching the base of Mt Cole. In the end I decided to tackle Byangee Mountain.
Being a few hours drive from Canberra I’d have to camp two nights for this walk, and I chose Long Gully Campground.
Google Maps took me north out of Braidwood along Nerriga Road and across to Wog Wog Campground … and then told me to drive along the walking track! I didn’t realise until I pulled into Wog Wog, so then had to go down through Mongarlowe back onto the highway, down the Clyde and up Western Distributor Road.
Unfortunately, the bridge across Bimberamala River was out so I had to backtrack and tried to cross over to Clyde Ridge Road via Wallaby Road and then Lyons Road. No such luck, as Lyons Road was closed for logging. So I had to take Mines Road, which is a pretty sketchy and overgrown track with a ford that I had to excavate so my Forester wouldn’t bottom out.
Use OpenStreetMap! It’s better than Google Maps in many aspects, and you can download maps onto your phone using OsmAnd for offline use and routing.
I’ve updated OSM to show the bridge is out:
Anyway, I got to the campground after dark although got to see The Castle silhouetted in the dusk sky.
(If you’re interested in ascending The Castle I recommend Tim Ashelford’s blog post Storming the Castle)
I initially had the entire small campground to myself until a small group arrived even later than me. I started a campfire and warmed up my dinner on my Winnerwell stove.
It wasn’t long before I started to hear rats moving around. During the night a rat managed to break into my car through the engine bay firewall (as far as I could tell) and get into some food in the boot. It did it again the second night although by that time I had removed all the food so it chewed my wiper fluid and coolant hoses instead, the rubber boot mat, and tunneled a hole through some carpet and foam between the boot and rear seats!
It took me a while to get going in the morning and I didn’t start walking to Byangee Mountain until 8:30am.
It was an unexpectedly warm day and I had packed for winter with a chance of rain. I live in Canberra so 23°C in winter was ludicrous.
The first two kilometres are relatively easy, just straight up the spur along a fire trail to the escarpment. The Castle quickly looms into view and stands out, high in the sky.
This is wilderness, so don’t expect track maintenance. At the top of the fire trail a large tree had fallen onto the track.
By this point you can no longer see The Castle, only the lower escarpment, which is itself still very impressive. The trail follows the base of the cliff and can be hard to follow at times. A bit of scrambling up, over, and down rocks and trees is required.
Here’s a video of a section of the track I took on the return. This was an easier section that didn’t require my full attention and both hands:
This was slow going. It took me about five hours to get to the base of Byangee Mountain, arriving just after 1:30pm.
The saddle between the western escarpment with The Castle and Byangee Mountain was the easiest part of the walk; sadly it’s only 150 metres.
This part of the walk was in sunshine, which really brought out the texture in the rocks.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CvgqlTeBukw/
Given the time and my remaining water I was already doubting ascending Byangee Mountain, and it took one look at the ascent to make my mind up that it was not for me.
I did see a little brown snake wiggle across the path near here. Not sure what it was.
I’d love to come back here again, although I’ll avoid that campground and the rats. I should probably consider pairing up with someone rather than doing it solo because it’s no walk in the park.
There’s no intentions log at the start of the trail, just a big yellow warning sign.
There’s some interesting rocks embedded in the conglomerate, ones that have fallen out onto the ground, and ones that have been washed down the river.
In terms of camping it went reasonably well this time. I now use a CPAP machine for sleep apnea and using that with my Bluetti battery over two nights was fine, just running it without humidifier or hose heating. Trying to use my Bellman espresso machine on my Winnerwell stove didn’t go so well; the Bellman needs a lot of heat over many minutes to reach pressure and even on my butane stove it nearly used up an entire small canister! So I need to think about meeting my caffeine needs. I like the Bellman, it makes good espresso. Next time I’ll try boiling the water first some other way before filling the machine. I have been thinking about adding the Winnerwell Water Tank to my stove but was reluctant to as it can’t be used with the Secondary Combustion Burner installed, but that might be ok.
I feel like I take too much stuff camping. I have enough gear to build a log cabin and live out here for six months. I want to cut that down to make it more manageable. I’m glad I got that Expedition134 box the day before as that kept my food safe from the rats.
This was my fourth solo camping trip. You can read about the previous three:
- Mount Clear, Namadgi National Park (first)
- Bungonia Gorge (second)
- Ngarigo Campground, Kosciuszko National Park (third)
