June 1959 School Magazine

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Maqazine

July, 1959

'Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Maqazine

July,: 1959

THE WARRUMBUNGLES Names on a map have always held a particular fascination ior me. Many of the Aboriginal names gracing our maps have a beauty that has been recognized by Australian poets. The name Warrumbungle has a grotesqueness which is in keeping with a range of volcanic monoliths, stark and dramatic, sur- rounded by eucalypt scrub. North-west of Coonabarabran and east of Gilgandra in central New South Wales they lie, a tangled mass of peaks, rising to heights of 1500 to 2000 feet above the general level of the plain. Oxley in his journey down the Murray River climbed Mt Harris in 1818 and wrote that he saw "a most stupendous range of mountains," which he called the Arbuthnot Range. In 1953 the whole area was officially gazetted as a National Park, donated by a grazier of the Wambelong Valley. This history we did not know when we entered the Worrum- bungle National Park at the very end of last December. From Coonabarabran to the entrance, the skyline had been jaggedly exciting. The colour of the peaks was a deep blue, accentuated by the pale blue of the sky and the yellow of the dry grass in the foreground. Our car bumped over the dry bed of Cummin- Cummin Creek and along the road past the tent of the ranger, who greeted us heartily. He had spent that morning nailing aluminium markers along a hiking route. We set up camp near the creek under Belougery Cleft Rock. As I lay that evening near the tent facing the rock, the setting sun shone through the

CRATER BLUFF.

cleft restoring in part its natural reddish colour, while the rest lay in sombre shadow. The following morning we drove to Camp Fincham and started our hike from there. The gums towered over the track, blotting out all views of the mountains, and for several miles, when gaily coloured rosellas claimed our attention, we had no indication of the grandeur we were to see. The mountains are volcanic in nature and consist of the old trachyte cores of volcanoes, resembling the Glasshouse Mountains. Ledges, ter- races and some tablelands are sandstone of Jurassic and Triassic origin, while other tablelands are basalt -flows . Sud- denly, after the last crossing of the dry Spirey Creek, the track zig-zagged up a steep slope. There appeared through the trees an amazingly slender needle of rock, 500 feet high, its width ranging from a knife edge to ten feet. Soon afterwards we caught our first glimpse of Belougery Spire, an impressive towering pinnacle. ·we approached the Breadknife along a ledge high above a green valley, and as we skirted its base, it appeared to grow in width. Rock flaked away in my hand, and I could appreciate the, courage and skill of the few people who have scaled its heights. Given new life by the breath- taking view of Belougery Spire, now quite close. Else and I hurried up to the top. As we struggled up the last few hundred yards, we continually turned round to see the Breadknife from above and the valley surrounding it. I sank exhausted on a flat rock to gaze down. 23

FROM BELOUGERY SPIRE TO· THE BREADKNIFE. 22