Mount Warning (Wollumbin)

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April 13th 2010

Published: April 13th 2010

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Mrs Smith

Bye Bye Al and Manique

Thanks for a great couple of days

We left Byron Bay and went in search of Mount Warning which we are going to hike up. We drove on the lovely country roads and through a town called UKI it is apparently called this as when they first started to farm cattle there all the meat was headed to the UK and had UK 1 stamped on it and so the town became known as UKI.

We found the campsite at the base of the mountain and rested here for the night. Seems really nice and relaxed here and there are little pits we can have campfires in which is kind of cool. We were going to get up really early, 3am ,and hike up the mountain to see the sunrise. Apparently this is the first place the sun rises in the morning. We decided not to bother as it was raining when we arrived and is supposed to still be cloudy in the morning.

We decided to hike up around midday. It is a 4.4km hike up and a 4.4km hike back down again and is supposed to take 4-5hours round trip. Straight away the track leads into lush rain forest and the trees are enormous.

Bye Fluffy

Here is being told by Shenton to stop hunting the Possum

This mountain is the central plug of a huge shield shaped volcano it is 20 million years old and the trees look like they have been growing there for that long.
The track gets steeper and steeper until at the top you have a chain rope to pull yourself up the last rocks to the summit. Thanks to Shenton’s fast pace (and his not liking anyone to be in front of us) we make it to the top in 1hour 45 mins and I am truly nick nacked. The view from the top is well worth it though and the clouds have cleared giving us an amazing view all the way down to the coast and Byron Bay lighthouse.

After a short rest at the top we head back down, we are going well and I just feel really energised (not like on the way up) and I start to jog down. Shenton is finding it hard to keep up and is calling me bionic woman. I am really not sure what has got into me but I just can’t slow down and am running now. We are close to the bottom and it is getting a bit slippery

Camp Kookaburra

and then i just go head first down the rocks and land in a massive mud puddle. My darling husband thoughtfully burst out laughing and proceeded to take loads of pictures of me. Normally with a cut hand and bruised leg i would be crying like a baby but I still felt the need to run to the bottom and this is when Shenton, trying to keep up, sprained his ankle! We made it down in just over an hour and as soon as I got back to the car the spirit left me and my cuts started to really hurt. I think I will be in pain tomorrow. Also we found one single flip flop by the car so we got out of there fast as we didn’t want a Barrington Tops experience again....

Back to the campsite for a hot shower, a log fire and a bit of guitar playing before we head back towards the coast tomorrow to go to Brisbane to meet up with Shenton’s dad for a couple of weeks.

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