Kosciuszko National Park 13-16 Oct 2019 Gungarlin Kidmans Mawsons Jagungal Area

This was a 4 days and 44.8Km medium-hard walk from the Gungarlin River camp ground to Kidmans Hut, then up to Mawson Hut through the Snowy Plains in the Gungarlin valley, and through the Burrungubugge Ck gorge and to the Valentine Ck valley and back.

The featured image is a view of Mt Jagungal from Mawson Hut

Kosciuszko National Park – Gungarlin River to Kidmans & Mawson Hut in the Jagungal Area

Introduction

On the morning of the 13^th Oct 2019 I set off from Canberra and headed to the Gungarlin River Camp Site to walk across the southern Gungarlin valley, called the Snowy Plains to Kidman’s Hut, thence up an old bridle trail route to the Great Divide just north of Big Brassy, then down to Mawsons Hut, then back to Kidmans and across the Snowy Plains to my car. I originally planned a 5 days trip with visiting the Cup & Saucer, Bluff Tarn & Mailbox on my return from Mawson. The weather predictions were for some heavy rain by mid-week, so I started one day early and expected to cut off one or two days.

This was a solo trip with all proper precautions taken and following the planned route mostly. My pictures of this trip are available on Google Photos

Day 1 – Sun 13th Oct

I left Canberra around 6.18AM and after a nature stop at Bredbo I drove to Cooma where I had coffee and some food at Maccas. I then drove via Rocky Plains down to Eucumbene River crossing, then up to Nimmo Hill and then along the Powerline or Island Bend Fire Trail (FT) to the Gungarlin River Camp site. It was just under 200Km from my place in Canberra to where I parked the car. The last 17.2Km or so are on a dirt road, with the section past Nimmo Hill being was in a poor heavily rutted condition. Lucky I had a Forester as I would have struggled in a conventional vehicle. However it was still slow going and I reached the location where I parked my car around 9.49AM. There were two vehicles in the normal vehicle car camping area but no one near the bridge location. I left my car at the site near the bridge over the River. Parked car at GPS 638931 5987834.

Gungarlin River Camp Ground GPS reading 638877 5987737, altitude 1320m approx.

I started the walk at 10.25AM with some wind blowing and clouds rolling over.

I then climbed over a road barrier, crossed the bridge and turned right to follow a well-defined 4WD trail west across the Snowy Plains. On the way I had to cross two small creeks, Diggers Ck and later Campbell’s Ck. Davey’s Hut can be seen some 400m south of the trail.

Davey’s Hut from past visits GPS 637851 5989446

On the way across the plains I saw two groups of brumbies one south of the river with 8 horses and another north of the river with 6 horses.

I didn’t visit Napthalis site as I had done so several time in the past. Napthalis Homestead Site GPS 638146 5990522. The site has a NPWS plaque with some history on the site. They also name it as Snowy Plains House. It was built in 1900s by Jardine for logging and grazing and collapsed in the 1940s.

On the way I passed again another hut site with some evidence of a ruin still there. This was

Harvey’s Hut site GPS 637192 5991587

It was also known as Broken Dray. It was built for grazing and destroyed by fire in 1976 reportedly to have been caused by rangers.

At the junction of Collin’s Ck and Teddy’s Ck I stopped for a quick break and filled up my water bottle. I had noticed a couple of horse tracks along the creek trail which were distinctive as the horse shoe stood out clearly. However they turned north at the Collins Ck junction and headed up towards the Barley Fields which lie adjacent to KNP.  I had also noticed some large 4WD tracks which headed up my way on the old trail through to Mill Flat but they stopped somewhere on the flat. I continued on and up through the nice forest track. Unfortunately a couple of large gum trees had fallen across the track with one tree having fallen very recently causing a diversion around its fallen branches some 15-20m to the north. I continued up stopping at 1PM for a half hour lunch break next to the track. I then continued on to my first top or gap known by me as Little Brassy Gap at 1.50PM. This is the highest point on Day 1 being around 1,635m. Mobile Phone calls (well Telstra at least) can be made from here. I have been here in late Sept or early Oct and found a heavy covering of snow on this gap. From this spot one usually gets a splendid view of the Brassy Mountains to the south-west as well as the ridge to its north to The Mailbox. The whole upper Burrungubugge River valley is also in view, although you cannot see Kidman’s hut from this spot.

The name of this gap derives from the sketch map “Mt Jagungal and the Brassy Mountains” produced by Tim Lamble of Sydney in the late 1970’s. I have the 1^st edition which I have heavily updated. There were three more editions and I also have pristine 4^th Edition. In this map Tim called the gap Brassy Gap, as does an old historical article about someone’s journey to Alpine Hut. In this article they also defined the mountain range in which the gap sits as the Little Brassy Mountains. Hence my term Little Brassy Gap. There is also a further gap right on the Great Divide, actually more as a low point through which the bridle trail took as its route to the upper Valentine Valley, Mawson s Hut as well as linking up with the old connection along a plateau south of the Mailbox and to Bulls Peak Trail. This later gap is logically the Brassy Gap, although in effect it donates the transition from the Brassy Range to the lower plateau just mentioned.

I then continued down the large open area below the gap, across a creek over more fields, across another side creek and then to Kidmans Hut. It was slightly overgrown in a couple of spots.

I reached Kidmans Hut at 3PM my earliest arrival for some time. I then put up my one man MSR Hubba HP tent, collected some firewood and water in my two wine bladders.

I then went up the track towards the Burrungubuggee River gorge. At a large cairn on a rock (WP 111), the guys who had been here the week before and earlier in Jan had tagged a route further south than I had usually taken. These guys were Alex Pyne & Peter Harrowell (?) (A&P). This was OK as it was closer to the original bridle trail. However they had then tagged a route further to the south-west across open grassy ground. I had a quick look around where they had gone but I couldn’t see any more tags. However the next day I noticed they had gone down a bit then came back around so that they rejoined the old route near Waypoint 116a (updated). So I went back to the original route and looked for the best way though some of the scrub that had grown over the recent years. I was able to determine the best route through to an old single Rock Cairn WP 115 which has been my target point for 20 years. I spent some time clearing what I could, which wasn’t really that much but it took me from 3.48-5.45PM and I had overall walked an additional 2.0Km of total distance.

On Day 1 I did 11.7Km to Kidmans plus a further 2.0Km on track searching ie 13.7Km all up. I had started out at 10.25AM and not finished overall until 5.45PM.

It had rained the previous day so a lot of the wood was damp. I cooked on a small fire which I had to continually prime by blowing concentrated air in a “slurp tube” to keep it alight.

On my way back to camp I had heard a young cat wailing down near the main river.

Kidman’s Hut GPS 631845 5991223, altitude 1515m.

This is a corrugated iron stockmen’s hut built about 1932 by Ken and Alec Kidman, Bill Napthali. It’s a single room, 3.6 x 3m unlined, fireplace, with a stone floor. Corrugated galvanised iron fixed to nogged timber frame. It has a wooden board door, with no window. Fireplace with timber frame, galvanised iron cladding and rock lining. The fireplace was rebuilt by NPWS tradesmen in 2007.

Day 2 – Mon 14th Oct

I arose around 6.00AM in a very cool bright sunny morning and with a relatively dry tent.

I left by walking around 150m south from the hut and then following my route up to WP 115 a Cairn. I spent some more time refining the route through the scrub. I was able to travel up the Burrungubugge Gorge mostly OK following A&P’s orange tags with some occasional patches of heavy scrub. Just before reaching the top of the initial gorge I had to traverse a large area of snow before I could reach the large open area above. I then went along the north side of the river for around 200+m before I could cross using a stuck log as the river was flowing quite strongly. Thus I had bypassed some of the piles of rock that represents old diggings.

The stones are on the south side; ie McDonald Diggings GPS 630416 5991396.

I then went across open fields and then up slightly and stopped at a spot with another cairn (WP 136 Cairn Tk Bottom) on a rock that represents the spot where the old Bridle Trail turned slightly south to then go up a ridge to the next level of the river, a large open bowl below the Mailbox and its southern ridge that is the start of the Burrungubugge River.

Near the cairn there is an old historic Cattleman’s fireplace GPS 629902 5991094.

I noted as I had seen earlier in the year that A&P had set up a newer tagged route slightly north of the old bridle trail. However I went up the old way and tried to work out the best route to the next small open area that represented the old trail. The issue was it was heavily overgrown now for the first 50m with the last 60m not too bad although there was quite a lot of fallen branches. I spent some time working through some of the bottom scrub and timber.

I had lunch at the bottom cairn around 12.30PM and around 1PM I started walking back up the trail and from the initial top I followed A&P’s orange tags up to where they deviated to the right or north just before the trail reached the crest. Instead I followed the old route to where I hit a large snow bank that covered some of final top of trail. Leaving the snow it was a short hike across to a cairn on a rock WP151. I stopped for water at the top where a branch of Burrungubugge provides easy access to clean water. GPS 629470 5990744, ie WP152. I took a picture of large snow banks covering part of the river as it dropped down into a higher up gorge. The river had now undermined a section of the snow bank and it looked spectacular.

The Burrungubugge rises in a large partly swampy valley which lies just east and below the Main Range ridgeline as well as peaks such as the Mailbox which meld with the range to feed water down into it. This is where I now was.

I then tracked south from the rock cairn and went up the original old route that travels south west through mostly open woodland to WP158 and into another high valley bowl that lies just below the main range but this time further south and is fringed by The Brassy Peak. I followed around the edge of the bowl before having to climb a vast and high snow drift to rise up to then be able to follow the ruts of the old bridle trail down into a nice gap ending at an old gate and Junction site, WP 166 Old Gate, which is near a low point between the Brassy Mountains and its continuation along a ridgeline that continued north to the Mailbox. It is this location that maybe should be known as Brassy Gap which is around 1855m.

I then followed the rough route of an old fence and track beside it north west over the end of a ridgeline that tracks north, although in this trip the actual fenceline was covered with snow for a small distance, so I walked more westerly until I came to the site of another junction and fenceline and probably gate WP 171 Gate. The old route went more northerly along a fenceline which ran more or less along the edge of the new plateau that ran west of a small ridge heading north to the Mailbox. Originally the route to Mawson turned left or west somewhere a little north, however I could not be bothered so I cut across through slightly wet ground cover for around 300m to then pick up the old route by turning west for another 300m across easy ground then several wet ponds before reaching the western edge of the plateau that is fringed by some rock outcrops and more wooded area. I could not reach the point WP 178 Large Cairn as there was a large snow drift with some steep sides blocking me as walking along the lower edge of this drift my leg broke through the snow and ice and my boot ended up in a small pool. I dragged myself out of the snow hole and staggered a little further to then rest on a nice rock 25m south west of the main cairn.

From this cairn the normal route was around a large rock to its west with another small cairn on its top, to then track south for 30m then directly west. This time I went slightly south and picked up the old route. The old trail is followable on the tops but as I got lower down I could see little on the ground due to growing ground cover so looking for the cairns was important. Near point 187 Cairn some of the ruts can be seen and then dual ruts then going downhill from this point are mostly visible until the flat land along the Valentine River is reached. This cairn marks where the trail does a 90 degree turn and becomes a two wheel rut trail heading straight for the Valentine River crossing.

The normal crossing is slightly south of the marked pole route across the river which goes in a west east direction. I usually cross at the southern end of a small island with a heaps of small stones trailing behind the island on it south end. So I crossed there with the water being 30-40cm deep and flowing swiftly. On the far side I would usually climb up the steep banks and follow a feint trail up past two snow poles. However this time I could not as there was a large snow bank along the edge of the banks some metre or more deep. Further south banks were covered with much higher snow drift many metres high.

So I took off my boots and put them in the top of my pack, which was difficult and wore crocs across. Then I reversed the process and put my boots and gaiters back on and the crocs went into the pack. I was able to sit on the southern edge of the island. The rest of the island was covered with a 20cm covering of snow. I then walked down the island on the snow then dropped down and walked on rocks across the minor creek between the island and a small amount of a grassy bank. I then had to walk north along the banks for less than 10m before I could easily climb up onto grass above the banks. It was then easy to walk south west climbing from the river banks uphill to Mawson Hut some 300m away.

I reached Mawson Hut at 5.34PM. I had not walked a huge distance, however some of the scrub had been tricky and thick, I had some large snow drifts to climb over, and I had climbed from 1515m at Kidmans to 1850m on the Great Divide, then down to 1765m on the Valentine River and back up to 1800m at Mawson Hut.

I noted my GPS seems to be reading altitude around 35m too low on this trip

It was a nice night at Mawsons and I cooked outside on the fire having to collect some wood although I used little of it. I collected water from the creek a 100m down to the north. The whole side of that creek right up and on to the plateau above was covered with snow.

For a mid-October the snow covering was exceptional, although the west and north facing slopes were largely clear of snow

Mawsons Hut. GPS 626137 5990522, altitude ~1800m

It is a corrugated iron stockmen’s hut built in 1930 by Herb Mawson, Con & John Bolton, Lindsay Willis.

It has 2 main rooms 7 x 3.6m, and with an entry/storage vestibule, Caneite lining, fireplace now with an iron stove, and timber floor.

Today I did 9.4km.

Day 3 – Tue 15th Oct

I arose early at 6AM and left around 8.30AM.

I went straight down to the Valentine River and reversed my crossing of the previous afternoon.

I noticed my GPS was not functioning properly and it was having problems being able to synch in with any satellites. I knew the route wasn’t the end of the world so I continued as per normal and trudged right up the plateau to the east stopping near the main cairn that marks the way down to Mawson as well as where to head east across the Great Divide. I tagged the Cairn with pink tape and slid down the snow bank to sit down where I had the day before. I then had a snack and changed the batteries in my GPS as they were low and the satellites had not synched in properly. I then decided to alter the setting and get the GPS to synch in with GPS satellites only and not also the Russian GLONASS ones as well. Strange but now it came back and synched straight away. I later wondered if the Ruskies had played with their satellites due to the Turkish/Kurds situation in NE Syria.

Since my GPS track from Mawson to the Plateau to the east was corrupted and largely missing for the first part until about 10.30AM, the GPS track has been reconstructed by reusing the last part of the previous days and reversing it. The time and date data will be incorrect but the route is largely correct.

I then crossed the high plateau but this time a little further to the north which more correctly represents the route the old drays and stockmen took. I then went down the old fenceline on the plateau’s eastern side which was similar to the way I had come. I continued from the gap but this time higher up along the ridge to the north which does more represent the way the bridle track had gone. However this time I was walking on thick snow and as it was mostly a gentle gradient it made walking very delightful. I eventually had to rejoin the grass and then follow around the edge of the great bowl here until could follow my way down to the lower plateau where the Burrungubugge River rises. It was getting windy so I grabbed some more water and continued down to the trail. I then had to carefully walk through snow to reach the start of the track which I had better marked on my way up. I then stopped just below WP 150 and spent about 45mins clearing branches and scrub. As can be imagined a lot of scrub in this area had been quashed under heavy snow for couple of months so it made for difficult clearing and walking.

I then followed the orange tags down to the small clearing at WP 143a and had lunch at about 1.20PM then I worked on establishing a trail down to the WP 136 Cairn Tk Bottom. I did enough and left the bottom cairn around 4PM and headed back down to towards Kidmans.

I cleared some more timber and did some tagging near WP 115 Cairn reaching Kidmans at 5.47PM.

I cooked on the fire again with a good night ensuing.

Today I did 9.3km and thankfully it was mostly downhill.

Day 4 – Wed 16th Oct

I got up early around and had breakfast in the hut on my stove.

I packed up everything and thankfully my tent was hardly wet.

I left Kidmans at 9.01AM, a little late, and I noted that there was a lot of cloud coming across intermixed with some sunny weather.

I progressed well but I stopped a few times and did some minor clearing to keep the way open.

This clearing was mainly in the section above the 2^nd creek crossing up from Kidmans. It was becoming windy and more overcast so I pushed on.

I reached Little Brassy Gap at 12.03PM and continued down a little with a strong wind blowing until I could find a suitable spot safe from tree impacts which I did at 12.20PM not far from the 1^st days spot. I lunched until 12.50PM then continued down to Collins and Teddy’s Ck junction around 1.45PM, collected some water and struck out for the Gungarlin.

About 500m from the Snowy Plains Hut site I nearly trod on a small copperhead snake. I think it was more surprised than me. Then it started raining and I continued until near the Snowy Plains site I had to stop and put on my Macpac Holyford rain jacket and I then had to wear it all the way back to the car. The rain was mostly persistent from the west. Passing Davey’s Hut I saw 6 brumbies looking wet and dismal.

I arrived at the car at 3.29PM and then I had several setbacks

1. I could not find the car keys for a couple of mins, but they turned out to be underneath my money/card pouch
2. I could not get my rain jacket off as the dual zip at the bottom of the tracks would not come off. I had to lever myself out of the sleeves and pull it over my head which was awkward in the rain
3. A beautiful flame robbin has taken up position on my cars two front side vision mirrors and naturally pooed over the mirrors. Not only that it has perched itself on the trim around the side windows and looked at itself, probably imagining it was seeing another bird. Luckily I had enough spare water bottles in the boot to quickly wash this off

I left the site around 4.20PM after changing all my clothes and headed back up the firetrail. On the flat area still within KNP I saw another brumby and host of small beautiful Red Neck Wallabies all enjoying a shower in the rain.

When I got to Nimmo Hill there was a sign “Take Care grader ahead”. You wouldn’t believe it they graded the road on a day like this. Well they had indeed graded it all the way from Nimmo Hill to the Eucumbene Rd and they had done a fantastic job. I have never seen the roads so good. I don’t know if they graded from Nimmo Hill down to the Gungarlin and up towards Cesjacks. Near the turnoff to Montana I passed the grader as the drive was talking to the one of the locals.

Today I did 12.4Km.

I continued to Cooma and had a snack and coffee, at Maccas. It was a quite night and then I enjoyed a nice easy drive home although it rained some. I was home at 7.45PM. Later I had to clean under my car as well as all my gear. I hadn’t had so much mud under my car for years.

I also had to contact Macpac who had me bring my jacket into their Canberra store. They sent it away to some place in Point Cook Melb to see if they can fix the zipper. I hope so as they don’t sell Event jackets anymore only other jackets based on Reflex material.

Distances

Distances per Day	Distances (km)
1. Gungarlin River Car Park to Kidmans Hut	11.7
Kidmans Hut up track searching	2.0
2. Kidmans Hut to Mawson’s Hut	9.4
3.  Mawson’s Hut to Kidmans Hut	9.3
4.  Kidmans Hut to Gungarlin River CP	12.4
Total	44.8

 Car Distances

The distance was 199Km one way from Belconnen, Canberra via the Monaro Highway, Cooma to Rocky Plains, then Nimmo Rd and Powerline FT.

Relevant Topographic Maps

The topographic maps covering the area of this trip are:

1:50,000 older maps:

• Khancoban
• Eucumbene, if you can get them

1:25,0000 newer maps:-

• Nimmo Plain for Teddy’s Ck and trail, Davey’s Hut, Snowy Plains, Gungarlin River
• Jagungal for part of Kerries, Brassy Peaks & Mountains, Mailbox, Mawsons, Kidmans, Burrungubuggee River

I strongly recommend that keen walkers check out the use of Oziexplorer from Des Newman’s OziExplorer plus OzRaster from GPSOz

Use of Oziexplorer with OzRaster maps for NSW enables you to load up a gpx file and see your route (and one’s available off this trip) on a modern topo map base

Produced Maps,  Pictures and Documents

One Google earth kml file, one gpx file and one Garmin gdb file covering the trip with waypoints and daily tracks are in a Google Drive folder.

On the screen captured Oziexplorer maps:-

Overview Maps-

• Overall Trip “KNP Oct19 Overview NSW Topo Map View.jpg” is an overview Map of the 4 Days Trip using Oziexplorer and Topoview 2006 NSW topo details

Day and Detailed Maps-

Oziezplorer Maps using NSW TopoView Maps:-

• Days 1&4 Part A – “KNP Oct19 Day 1 & 4 A Teddys Ck Trail to Gungarlin Campsite NSW Topo Map View.jpg”
• Days 1&4 Part B – ” KNP Oct19 Day 1 & 4 B Kidmans to Teddys Ck Trail NSW Topo Map View.jpg”
• Days 2&3 – “KNP Oct19 Day 2 & 3 Kidmans to Mawson NSW Topo Map View.jpg”
• Days 2&3 – “KNP Oct19 Day 2 & 3 A Kidmans to Top Burrungubuggee NSW Topo Map View”.jpg
• Day 2&3 – “KNP Oct19 Day 2 & 3 B Mawson to Top Burrungubugge NSW Topo Map View.jpg”

On the screen captured Mapsource Maps using Oztopo Maps:-

• Days 1&4 – “KNP Oct19 Day 1 & 4 A Teddys Ck Trail to Gungarlin Campsite Oztopo Map View.jpg”
• Days 1&4 – “KNP Oct19 Day 1 & 4 B MillFlat to Kidmans detailed Oztopo Map View.jpg”
• Days 2&3 – “KNP Oct19 Day 2 & 3 A Main Range Gap to Kidmans detailed Oztopo Map View.jpg”
• Days 2&3 – “KNP Oct19 Day 2 & 3 B Main Range Gap to Mawson detailed Oztopo Map View.jpg”

Mapsource Special Detailed Maps using Oztopo Maps:-

• Days 2&3- “KNP Oct19 Day 2 & 3 special Burrungubuggee Top to Bottom of Track detailed Oztopo Map View.jpg”
• Days 2&3- “KNP Oct19 Day 2 & 3 special Burrungubugge Gorge to McDonald Diggs detailed Oztopo Map View.jpg”
• Days 2&3- “KNP Oct19 Day 2 & 3 special Bottom Burrungubugge Gorge to Kidmans detailed Oztopo Map View.jpg”

Notes: Map view extracts came from Oziexplorer using NSW DFSI Spatial Services approval for display of their base map from TopoView 2006. GPS files available on Google Drive.

Map view extracts also came from using Garmin Mapsource using Oztopo base maps with permission of © BKK Enterprises Pty Ltd, http://www.gpsoz.com.au

The trip maps and sketches showing the trip tracks and various waypoints of important locations are available on a folder in Google Drive and the Trip Maps are also in the Google Photos album. The Oztopo Trip Maps produced using Mapsource are in a sub folder

“Mt Jagungal and the Brassy Mountains” is an excellent old sketch map produced by Tim Lamble of Sydney in the late 1970’s. I have the 1^st edition which I have heavily updated. There were three more editions and I also have pristine 4^th Edition. I understand that Lamble will no longer produce any updates of this map so what you see is all that’s available. Some digitised versions have been made by myself and also by people with better facilities. If you need a copy contact me.

Greg Hutchison, 28 Oct 2019