Ettrema Gorge – April 2009

Quiera Clearing > Jingles Pass > Ettrema Gorge > Transportation Spur
Ettrema Gorge, a creek which runs through Morton National Park, on its way to the Shoalhaven River … for those “in the know”, this is the ultimate in places to bushwalk, crystal clear pools, towering bluffs, and pockets of rainforest.
And we were here for four days over Easter, life doesn’t get much better than that. You really have to go for four days, it’s a long drive and the best parts of the Gorge are quite a ways downstream.  This was my second trip, the first one was back in November 2001.

Kerry K led the trip and we wandered off from Quiera Clearing in search of Jingles Pass.  We stopped along the way to bury Doug S’s scout hat that he’d lost there back in 2001 and I had found it on another trip a few months ago (looking very battered and beat up, he couldn’t wear it anymore so buried it at a camp cave!).  Eventually we found a bit of a footpad down Jingles, sadly though the track petered out and we were bashing our way through chest high ferns looking for the best route down.  Once there we were going to camp at Myall creek but discovered that a lot of the sand bank had washed away so we headed further downstream and eventually ended up amongst weeds and head high vegetation up on a sandbank.  Not a great start to the four days!  Next morning we continued our trip downstream. The water in the creek is crystal clear and the creek bottom is worn rocks/pebbles.

Even though the weather was quite cool, some of us swam in the pools.  On the second night we camped at the junction of Ettrema Creek and Jones Creek, a good sandy bank on two levels.  I remember on my first trip camping here and Geoff S pulled a wok out of his pack and cooked up Nassi Goering.   We walked upstream in Jones Creek and checked out the old gold mine and most of us had a dip in a deep pool under a waterfall.

Next day we headed further downstream to camp just near Gallows Gully on a rocky bank beside a large pool, it was a bit uneven although with all the casuarinas around, many of us took the pine needles from under the cassaurinas to even out the ground.We headed down to Gallows Gully early next morning and used the huge fig tree to climb out at the side of Transportation Spur, a very steep, scree covered spur, eventually getting to Pardon Point where there’s a fantastic view of where we’d travelled over the last 4 days.  A bit of scrub bashing (it’s not Ettrema unless you encounter some scrub) and we were back at the cars.