Peter Thomas kindly arranged for a variety of ACT Scout leaders to take a tour of the Jagungal portion of Kosciuszko National Park under the guidance of Robert Green. Robert is very experienced with this area, and has recently written a book. Five leaders from the Macarthur Scout Group decided to go along on this tour and take a look at our hiking options in the area.
The first challenge is getting to the area. The campsite we used for the first day is only accessible to four wheel drive vehicles — the slope down to the camp site from Nimmo Plain is quite rocky and has some loose sections. That said, the Landcruiser I was in had no trouble making the trip, and the group managed to get two car style four wheel drives into the area without problems as well. The route to Nimmo Plain from the south of Canberra is as follows:
We explored two areas which are both a short drive from Nimmo Plain. We in fact didn’t explore anything at Nimmo Plain itself, but as the intermediate point where the road forks it makes sense to show that bit of route first. From Nimmo Plain, it you turn left you end up where we camped for the first day, which is a lovely NWPS camp site with fire pits, a pit toilet, and trout in the river.
The route to that camp site is like this:
From this campsite we did a 14km loop walk, which took in a series of huts and ruins along relatively flat and easy terrain. There are certainly good walking options here for Scouts, especially those which don’t particularly like hills. The route for the first day was like this:
Its a fantastic area, very scenic without being difficult terrain…
As you can see from the pictures, life around the camp fire that evening was pretty hard. One note on the weather though — even at the start of April we’re already starting to see very cool overnight weather in this area, with a definite frost on the tents and cars in the morning. I wouldn’t want to be hiking in this area much later in the season than this without being prepared for serious cold weather.
The next day we drove back to Nimmo Plain and turned right. You then proceed down a dirt road that is marked as private property, but has a public right of way through to the national park. At the border of the park you can leave the car again and go for another walk. The route to this second entrance to the park is like this:
This drive on the second morning involved a couple of river crossings, with some representative pictures below. Why does the red Landcruiser get to do the crossing three times? Well that’s what happens when you forget to shut the gate…
Following that we did a short 5km return walk to Cesjack’s Hut, which again wasn’t scenic at all…
