Exploratory trip into Budawang Wilderness, Australia

When I was about 19 or 20 some friends and I did a trip up the east coast to central Queensland, and did a lot of hiking along the way. There were a lot of giant stinging trees. Stinging trees have spines only on certain surfaces, meaning you could touch them safely in one spot but definitely not on another. Being biology students we knew all about where you could hold them. So they decided to play a game involving pulling off the leaves, holding them by the part of the stalk that was safe, and then using the flat of the leaf (where most of the spines were) to whack each other with. There was a lot of running around the forest and screaming.

I hung back as far as I could but saw a couple of them give each other some pretty good whacks on bare skin. Keep in mind these plants are so painful they have been known to kill dogs that walked through them !!! The pain lasts as long as the spines are embedded in your skin, which can be months.

The rest of the trip was spent with them whingeing and whining about the pain. o_O The things we do when we're young. :D
 
I think small fish like galaxias and gudgeon. Not really sure, no big fish so no one fishes these mountain streams near the coast, at least that I've ever heard of. Plenty of yabbies (crayfish) though. Further west you would get brown and rainbow trout, and carp.
 
I've spent a bit of time down there, multiple visits from Ulladulla down as far as Eden. The winter is the best time to visit as nearly all of the parks are deserted, the towns are quiet, tourists are gone, and kids are in school.
I'm normally exploring along the coast, although I did climb Pigeon House last year.

There is so much more left to see, more than I could ever get to in a hundred years, so I sure appreciate your photos. Thanks!
 
I know what you mean. I just drove though Ulladulla a couple of hours ago. It's the last day of the long weekend so everyone is going home. There was a 10km traffic jam from south of Ulladulla to Milton, crawling along at almost walking pace, took an hour or maybe more.

If you're up that way again, you should check out (if you haven't already) Boyd Lookout and nearby Granite Falls in Morton National Park, the 'floater' oysters in Burrill Lake where you can collect as many as you can pick up out of the mud, 'Old Blotchy' the largest Spotted Gum possibly in existence hidden away in Murramarang National Park, and the Corn Trail in Monga National Park if you're into hard walks.

That coastline is a beautiful part of the world.
 
Ha, yes, I had a look at your page and I know that area well !! The track you mentioned from North Durras to the Lake that you couldn't find, I've walked it, yes it's a bit hard to find. I has many huge grass trees along it. And I've walked up Mt Durras maybe 20 or 30 times, been doing it since I was about five years old I think. If you're ever back down this way let me know. :)
 
Checking my photos to remind myself...
Last time I was down there I parked at the Walter Hood Memorial in the Conjola National Park. From the memorial I walked the beach to Berrara and made a loop by walking up Berrara Creek and back to the memorial.
Also had a nice walk through the forest and along the ocean at Narrawallee Nature Reserve.
 
That's a beautiful part of the world, for sure.

An interesting story.... Maybe 20 years ago, I was a few kilometres inland from that beach you walked along in Conjola NP, with a small group of people, exploring the forest. I took them to a giant eucalypt (its trunk was about three metres wide at head height) that I'd found earlier. The tree was hollow, with big openings around the trunk at ground level. You could walk inside, but had to climb down into a pit that was underneath it, going down into the roots.

One of the group was an Aboriginal woman. She was middle-aged, so she was old enough to have known some of the elders that were still around many years ago. She was the most talkative person you ever met, never stopped, very opinionated, but good natured and fun. When we climbed down into this tree she went very quiet, and moved real slow, as though she was spooked somehow. She didn't say a word the entire time we were in it, or on the walk back out.

Back at the road, she recovered a bit. She said the elders in that area would each have a personal tree, almost like a totem, one of the giants with a hollow base. When they died, they were buried inside the base of the tree. She had had an overwhelming feeling that this was one of those trees, and was literally unable to talk while she was in there. She had felt there was some kind of presence.
 
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