Barrington Tops - looking for some advice please :)

[glenrock]

Hi all.....thanks for having me on your site.

I'm a fairly active person that has participated in many sports but relatively new to bushwalking and hoping you can provide me some assistance. I live in Newcastle NSW and I'm looking to expand my knowledge of the local area by exploring Barrington Tops and surrounding areas. Noteworthy local experiences already undertaken are: Glenrock Reserve, parts of the Great North Walk, the Watagan Mountains including McLean's & Hunter Lookouts, Lostock dam & surrounding areas. I have a good understanding of meteorology and local weather conditions but limited in topography.

I'm very interested in spending some time exploring Barrington Tops.....my idea is to travel by car/4WD to a convenient entry point and walk to a base that could house us for a few nights that would allow me and others experience various locations during the day with walks up to 8 hours round trip.

Any assistance on conditions, locations, do's/don'ts, equipment, facilities, swimming areas etc etc would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[davidmorr]

Hello Glenrock, and welcome

I gather from what you have said that you have been walking on marked tracks? And that you are looking at daywalks rather than overnight backpacks?

The first thing to do is to talk to NPWS about conditions. There is (was?) a quarantine area that covered a large part of Barrington Tops east of Junction Pools. It is to stop dieback spreading to the whole plateau. Walkers are not allowed to enter the quarantine area. However, there was a suggestion recently that they were going to allow people in again, subject to a foot wash station at the entrances to try to prevent the fungus spreading. So you need to check up on this.

There are only two vehicle access points. One is from below the plateau on the Williams River, north of Dungog. You can walk along the river to Rocky Crossing on a track, a beautiful rainforest area - medium day walk, with a cold swim at Rocky Crossing. A longer walk, and one used by many backpackers is to start from Lagoon Pinch and climb to Carey's Peak. Return the same way. This is a long day, involving a climb of 750m iirc through different vegetation levels. Don't do it if it is cloudy - I have had whiteouts many times at Carey's Peak.

The other is the Scone to Gloucester road, which is a fairly bone-shaking drive. There are a few access points, depending on what you want to do. Polblue camping area is very convenient as a base camp. You can go out from here and do day walks both north and south of the road. Few of the tracks are actually marked, so you need to have a topo map and be very good with your navigation.

North of the road is a network of logging roads which provide reasonable access to waterfalls and swimming holes if you know where they are. Some are marked, but the walks are only a few hundred metres generally. The better waterfalls are bush bashes through generally quite unpleasant scrub (lawyer vine...).

South of the road there is only one convenient access, which is the Barrington Trail from near Polblue. This takes you to camping areas at Little Murray and Junction Pools. There is nothing much near Little Murray as it is on the edge of the quarantine area, but it is a nice place to camp. (Pit toilet, flat and grassy.)

From Junction Pools (pit toilet, very sloping and bare earth), there is only one marked track, over Aeroplane Hill to Black Swamp. From there you can loop around to Carey's Peak. Return the same way, or follow the old road west back around to the locked gate near the Junction Pools turnoff. If you can find it, just west of Carey's Peak the Edwards Swamp trail takes off to the north and goes around the edge of Edwards Swamp and back to Junction Pools. A very pretty walk taking in a lot of the alpine plateau.

There are the occasional old fire trails that you can walk on too, but there is often not much at the end. Usually pleasant walking though.

You could also go to Gloucester Tops, reached from south of Gloucester on the main road. The Link Trail follows the ridge across to near Carey's Peak. Very rainforesty, and a bit indistinct the last I heard. It would be a long day, but I have heard of people walking to Carey's Peak and back in a day.

Good luck!