Mt Barney is a pair of peaks on the border between Queensland and New South Wales. It’s the third tallest mountain in South-East Queensland. While it’s only 1354m above sea level – a molehill compared to many of the world’s mountains – it’s up there by Australia’s standards.

For my last outing with my hiking group before I leave Queensland I arranged to climb the lesser known trail up Mt Barney’s South-East Ridge.  The South Ridge is the more common way up for this trip will be our descent.  The South-East Ridge is more difficult as it’s steeper and more exposed in several places.

Mt Barney – South East Ridge to South Ridge Circuit – 16.5km – 10 hours – difficulty: very hard.

The hike has an estimated 10-hour length, so I arranged for the group to meet at 6.30 a.m. outside the information booth in Rathdowney. With 7 of us in attendance, we drove to the car park at the base of the mountain. Thankfully the signs confirmed where we were supposed to be, as the mountain and most of the area was shrouded in low cloud. A bit of a contrast to the fact the temperature was supposed to rise to a muggy 30ºC today.

The car park is about 3.5km from the beginning of the South-East Ridge trail, along a dirt road that works its way towards the mountain by crossing a couple of small hills. There is only one way to find the South-East trail, the letters SE carved into the trunk of a tree beneath a cross. What the cross means I’m not sure, perhaps an ominous message left by previous climbers?

The thin dirt track began at a gentle slope but grew steadily steeper as it worked its way towards a rocky spire.

At our backs as we climbed, the wedding cake topped Mt Lindsey and for much of the morning, cool breezes flowed from the east.

The climb was anything but easy, and the 7 of us stopped regularly, usually when the ridge came to a flat area every 100m or so. The trail changed constantly, moving between dirt and root steps, to rocky steps cut from sheer gullies with plentiful handholds to smooth rock scrambling.

At the top of the short flat areas we often looked down on something different, a sheer cliff face here, a long rock gully there or down on top of a mini forest. Each time we’d scramble up to the top of a ridge we’d find the great spire of the next one staring down at us. This gave the sense that the mountain just keeps going, on and on.  But eventually we climbed over a ridge to find we’d run out of mountain.  The top of the Eastern Peak is an open rocky area giving us a total 360º view.

Unfortunately, because of the early November heat the views from the mountain were hazy. The heat also brought out many bugs that seemed to dance in the air around us.  They seemed quite attracted to the smell of our sunscreen as we reapplied.

We stopped for lunch before heading down a vague trail that led towards the saddle between East and West peaks.  We climbed down flat rocks with the rocky spire of the more difficult West Peak ahead of us.

Thankfully for grippy hiking boots the decent wasn’t difficult and we arrived at the saddle in short order. The saddle is a small rainforest and has a space set aside for camping.

The South Ridge trail, also known as Peasant’s Ridge, was more difficult than the ascent of the South-East ridge. While it wasn’t as arduous, it was far more humid, with the trees hiding not only the sun, but easterly breeze as well.  This meant our descent was in the full humidity, so it was hot and uncomfortable.

Eventually, we made it to the bottom and headed towards the car park. This was perhaps the hardest part of the day. After climbing the mountain, we were hot, tired and sore.  The four kilometres of dirt road just seemed to go on forever and the two small hills we’d climbed at the beginning of the day seemed each as tall as Mt Barney itself.

Finally, eight hours after we began we made it back to the vehicles, then it was back to Rathdowney for a well-earned beer.  An excellent final hike in Queensland.

The Lone Trail Wanderer.

In 1955, an RAAF Lincoln bomber flying a sick baby from Townsville to Brisbane went down in bad weather, crashing 50m from the top of Mt Superbus. The sole survivor of the crash was a ginger Kelpie.

This week, I took a small team from my hiking group to climb Mt Superbus and find that Lincoln Wreck. This hike wasn’t going to be easy and it wouldn’t help that it was forecast to be 33ºC and muggy or that all we had was a sketchy set of instructions.

As the trip to the beginning of the hike was a long way from our meeting place, I camped out in my van the night before. It certainly made the early start the next day a little easier.

The meeting point is the usual spot, Aratula BP, an hour outside of Brisbane. The hike starts a further 80km into the Main Range along a dirt road with a couple of stream crossings, which could have been more of a hazard if it had actually rained in Queensland over the past months. At one slightly deeper crossing, we were forced to leave half of the cars behind and pile into my van for the last several kilometres to a pleasant looking farm.

Through the gate, we headed along a dirt road which we believed was the beginning of the hike. But after following the dirt road a couple of kilometres we finally discovered a National Park sign and a thin trail that was the actual start point.

We walked through overgrown rainforest for about two kilometres following the thin trail, slowly working our way uphill. Sometimes we taller walkers were forced to crawl to follow the trail.

At some points along the hike we followed pink ribbons attached to trees, but mostly we followed the vague trail. About an hour in, however, the trail petered out and we were left without markers in the overgrown rainforest. And being immersed in trees, there were no reference points, not even the mountain we knew was there. Our instructions directed us south east, so with compasses out, we headed off-trail in search of a more obvious trail.

As we walked we found a downed tree across the gully like a bridge.

We then climbed a wet gully, continuing south east. At the top we located the trail we’d been looking for and followed it. While unsure exactly where we were, we stopped for lunch before continuing along the trail, following it deeper into the rainforest.

The trail ended abruptly at a rocky gully and we discussed our options. It was 1.30pm with sunset due at 5.45pm. We’d been walking nearly 3 hours, so we had to judge how long push on before turning back, allowing ourselves time to return to the vehicles before sunset. After a search around the bottom of the gully, we located a tin arrow nailed to a tree, a marker mentioned in the instructions! We decided to follow the arrow and it led us up the rocky gully.

The rocky gully climbed upwards rather steeply, occasionally forcing us to climb short cliffs and avoid both stinging nettles and Gympie Gympie plants, touching either is not suggested.  We scaled a large fallen tree trunk, which posed more of an issue for the shorter legged members of the group. At the top of one short cliff we located the bomber’s engine block.

This prompted us to continue climbing.  A little further up we were distracted by some pink markers that led us nowhere, so we returned to the gully and continued climbing.

Eventually after a series of intense scrambles, we found the bomber’s fuselage wreckage, a solitary wing and a mess of other metal.

We stopped for a short break before beginning the long journey back to the vehicles.  We would have liked to have continued to the top of Superbus, but with the short winter days, it was best not to.

The climb down was fairly straightforward and on arriving back at the tin arrow, we again located the main trail. We followed it back and discovered where we had lost the trail.

We arrived back at the vehicles as the sun began to set and drove back to Aratula hotel for the obligatory post hike beer.

Overall, while we started late and lost the trail going in, we found the wreck and got out before sunset. A great adventure and an intense hike with a good bunch of people.

The not so Lone Trail Wanderer

At nearly 1000m above sea level, Mt Maroon stands out because of its jagged rocky parapets.

Today’s my second walk in the Mt Barney National Park, having walked to the Lower Portals yesterday. Similar to yesterday, I arranged to meet the group at the sleepy town of Rathdowney.

Once the small group had arrived we drove to the trailhead. The walk begins at a pond and as ducks frolicked in the water we headed along a grassy path. The path turned quickly to dirt and then to rock as it climbed, initially at a slight gradient before getting steeper.

The four of us climbed slowly up the slope of the shorter rocky spire beside Mt Maroon. The dirt, rock and root steps led us steadily through the sparse tree-covered slope, giving the occasional peek at the surrounding land and the rocky parapet of the main mountain.

Grass Trees began to appear as we climbed and the terrain turned more rocky. We climbed around it and over a small series of boulders.

It was here that the trail changed.  We headed down across the top of a steep gully towards the main rock face. The trail became sand mixed with ash from a fire several years earlier and soon began to climb again. The trail turned quite steep and there were several places we had to scramble over rocks. This was the hardest part of the hike and we quickly made our way up through it, working our way along the rocky wall.

Small bamboo-like trees began to grow in a grove as we climbed through more rocky out crops until we eventually arrived at the saddle where the trail flattened out.

To our left, a short path led to a large flat rocky out crop.  We climbed it and at the top we had out first real taste of the views. We also discovered that the rocky parapet we’d thought was the summit was only the middle peak of three.  The top peak beckoned us higher.

The climb to the top peak was not hard compared with the rest of the climb. More of a scramble over large slabs of rock lying on top of each other. Following one of our racier companions, we quickly climbed the distance to the top and just stood in awe at the view around us. At the top of Mt Maroon, there are few trees, a large cairn…

…and 360º views across the fantastic landscapes around us.

Just to the south on the state border the peaks of Mt Barney.

To the side of Mt Barney and across the border is Mt Lindsey with its unique rocky spire.

To the west we could see Mt Greville, Mt Edwards and Moogerah Lake.

To the north, the parapet of Mt Maroon, the middle peak being part of a rocky crater.

The only downside of the Mt Maroon climb was the number of people waiting for us at the top. Several groups had all decided to climb the mountain today and there was a veritable party going on up there.

The four of us kept to ourselves as we ate lunch. Then after 30 minutes of the glorious view the thought of a beer persuaded us to begin our descent. The steeper parts were trickier coming down but didn’t cause any problems.  After about 90 minutes we arrived back at the cars and headed back to Rathdowney for a well-earned beer.

The Trail Wanderer.