Whungee Wheengee

Woo Hoo! It’s only taken four years on my fourth trip down Whungee Wheengee to finally write up a trip report of one of my favourite canyons and a great one to do in preparation for our forthcoming Mountaineering Trip. As it is now a well established fact that I get misplaced on trips that I’ve done before (must be the Alzheimer’s setting in) - it was up to Mike to do the navigation!

We had a leisurely start from the Cathedral of Ferns at 9:20am arriving at the ‘gambe a bit after 10. Then it was time for the slog up the hill on the other side. The humidity was so oppressive that I was soon sweating like Homer in a Donut shop.

[Bec on the first abseil into Whungee Wheengee]

After the fires back in 2013, I figured that track may have changed a bit and sure enough we dropped in a bit higher than I remember to the first short abseil into Whungee Wheengee.

[Mike on the 2nd abseil into Whungee Wheengee]

Mike heads down the second abseil into a shallow pool below which is immediately followed by a little duck under. I had decided to try out a harness that someone had given me (no - not the one I found two days ago at Kanangra) and it was around here that I realised that the plastic gear loops had ripped off and I was missing all my rescue gear! Luckily it was all lying in the pool at the base of the second abseil.

Bec squeezes through a small gap that leads to the Duck Under.

[heading into the Whungee Wheengee Duck Under]

Alex and Bec about to head into the Duck Under. Unfortunately the water level was a bit high so there was an air gap but once we popped up into the cave the Glow Worms were awesome.

[Alex in a constricted section of Whungee Wheengee]

I have no idea what Alex is staring at but it must’ve been good.

Ohhh, Shucks!!!

I asked Mike and Bec to stand still for 10 mins whilst I took a series of shots for an HDR composite but as you can see, Mike couldn’t deal with it so he had to lie down.

So many beautiful things to stare at.

[Yabbies in a pool in Whungee Wheengee Canyon]

And I don’t know why, but I have never seen so many fish and Yabbies in one trip - it was amazing. In this pool alone there was an extended family of 20 Yabbies.

More cool canyon features.

[2nd last abseil of Whungee Wheengee Canyon]

Mike heads down the 2nd last abseil. It was here on my 2nd trip on 23 March 1997 that The Human Sponge aka Bulent got his foot stuck in the crack between Mike’s legs (does that read right?). He was wearing these hideous Army Boots that laced up all the way up to his knees and he slowly slipped upside down with his foot firmly stuck in the crack which took me what seemed hours to get unstuck. It was probably only a few minutes but the piss taking is still good value almost two decades later as The Human Sponge will discover as soon as I post a link to this on Facebook :P