Grandeur of the Gammon Ranges
The rounded summits swell smoothly upward, and the ridges and spurs sprawl out like the limbs of some great monster. The slopes, so gentle near the crests, steepen with in-creasing distance from them, and then change dramatically into sheer precipices, plunging down into deep gorges whose courses wind and twist through the sombre, elephantine mass of high land.
This is the picture of the heart of the Gammon Ranges.
On the eastern side it is different. Here the rounded shapes are replaced by beetling cliffs and by soaring ridges, whose ragged crests are mere shaky piles of shattered rock.
The smooth appearance of the central hills is deceptive. They are not easy to walk over, covered as the surface is with stones upwards of the size of a man’s hand, and overgrown as they are with thick scrub.
The gorges that snake so bewilderingly through this high country and that lie, often unseen and unsuspected, in one’s path, are a further bar to the indiscriminate crossing of the ranges. Progress may be made along the beds of gorges and along the crests of ridges, but usually only with considerable difficulty if a combination of these ways is tried.
The steep walls of the gorge that is being followed compel one to continue along it until the unclimbable faces of waterfalls rising up in giant steps of rock call a halt.
As the traveller leaves the top of the ridge that he has followed, the ground falls away at an increasing rate until he peers into a great gulf at his feet—a gulf from which he may advisedly turn back.
Ridge-walking and creek-walking are through two quite different worlds in the Gammon Ranges. High up on the hills the path may lie over spinifex-covered slopes, with the full dome of the sky above and vistas stretching out beneath. It may lie through ti-tree thickets which hour after hour tear at the traveller’s clothes as he forces a way through them, leaving frayed fabric and scratched skin as reminders of the weary struggle. And it may lie through more open patches where the red soil is deeper, supporting perhaps some little tufts of Flinders grass beneath dwarf gums.
In places the path may follow an easier course along a flat ridge top on rocky pavements, in the cracks of which only a thin, stunted growth can exist.
Down in the creek beds the path weaves among the large gums and the prolific native pine. Only a narrow strip of sky shows above, and there is a feeling of oppression created by the confining rock walls.
The “pads” worn by animals on their regular journeys for water are kept to as far as possible. These will follow for a time a piece of relatively boulder-free soil along one side of the watercourse, but inevitably they peter out, to be succeeded by a stretch of boulder-strewn creek bed through which the traveller stumbles.
The reader may now appreciate some of the character of the Gammon Ranges which proves so fascinating to those who have seen them and walked in them. The party which I took there in August experienced both kinds of walking described, their south to north crossing of the central plateau being mainly ridge-walking.
A description of this appeared in “The Advertiser” at the time, so I shall not repeat it. Instead, I shall describe excursions in the rocky eastern sector, undoubtedly the grandest, most spectacular part of the Ranges.
An interesting gorge that we visited was one known as the “Gorge of Ferns.” The narrow entrance was blocked by a great wedged boulder or chockstone, over which we had to climb. We followed the defile, only six feet wide at first, until it opened into a small, steep-sided amphitheatre. The giant ferns which grew there years ago were no longer to be found. Perhaps they had died out during the recent drought.
Climbing the chockstone at the entrance to the “Gorge of Ferns.”
I had longed throughout the past year to enter the Cleft, a great chasm splitting Cleft Peak in two. I had seen it last year when high up on the range to the north. Its existence seemed altogether remarkable. A rocky peak rising in the fork of the main creek draining the eastern side of the ranges was cleft from top to bottom, forming a chasm which might have been a hundred yards wide and a thousand feet deep.
Ordinary erosion could not have formed this cleft without there being some geological peculiarity—not evident to the observer—to account for its extraordinary form and position.
We planned to enter the Cleft, and to do so four of us left our camp on the Balcanoona Creek under lowering clouds and in drizzling rain. We reached and followed the stony bed of the main eastern creek, and after passing the junctions of many tributary creeks we camped under the trunks of some fallen trees, lighting our camp fire in front of a little rock grotto in which we sat sheltered from the rain.
We went on upstream in the morning. Shrubs with mauve and yellow flowers grew in the creek bed, which henceforth took the name of Wildflower Creek.
A few minutes after leaving our camp we came unexpectedly upon the entrance to the Cleft. The opening was unpretentious and like that of any other of the small side gullies that we had passed. The yellow-flowered bushes grew thickly here.
Eagerly we hurried on the few yards needed to obtain a good view into the valley. Rain was still falling, and the clouds were low down on the surrounding ridges. The Cleft stretched away in front. On either side of a narrow floor choked with dwarf gums, pine and scrub rose two mighty walls of red rock.
They disappeared above into the swirling mists which now and then thinned or parted to show tottering crags high above. As we pressed forward, picking our way along the rocky bed and pushing through the thick, wet undergrowth, the walls grew steeper, and seemingly higher, and they gradually closed in.
A great tower of rock rose on our left to many hundreds of feet above us. Ahead, the Cleft could be seen narrowing before ending in a steep and narrow waterfall. Occasional gaps in the mist showed a deep rock saddle at its head.
We went on towards the final waterfall, the gully floor now rising underfoot as a steepening slope of the ground and splintered spoil from the crumbling walls. Much of the debris looked new, and as we saw this we looked up apprehensively at the pinnacles above. Native pines of unusual size grew on these final slopes.
The walls closed in the gap to a few feet at the top of the slope. The narrow bed of the waterfall climbed up out of sight into the mist in a series of steps. We lingered a while here, and then retraced our steps down the valley once more, bemoaning the fact that there was no sun to instil the full, living color into the rust-stained cliffs so that our cameras might record them more effectively.
The weather had so much improved by the morning of our last day in the ranges that, though we were far from the Cleft, we decided that we would alter our plans and return to make an attempt to climb Cleft Peak East, the summit of the higher eastern wall.
Carrying no packs, but only waterbottles, cameras and a little food in our pockets, we walked fast, and two hours later we paused for a rest in Wildflower Creek just short of the entrance to the Cleft.
The day was perfect. There was scarcely any breeze, and only a few fleecy clouds floated gently through the sky. We would try climbing the peak along the north ridge. We started up it, the first part being a short, sharp climb out of the creek.
The ridge mounted at a shallower angle for a while, the sides dropping steeply away from its rocky crest. We made our way slowly upwards towards a prominent rock tower where another ridge coming in from the left met ours.
When we got there we had to traverse across the right side of the tower over a steep rock face. We climbed on to the crest of the main north ridge beyond.
Now the Cleft showed up on our right in all its glorious color. The slope falling into it steepened as we went forward. The ridge was narrow and of loose, broken rock. It continued upwards, and beyond a second tower was a dip covered with loose slabs of stone.
We went down this slope and up the far side one at a time. Here the way became really narrow. We climbed out of a short notch in the ridge on to the top of an unstable wall of slabs piled dangerously one upon the other. This was undercut on the west, and one peered down on this side into an abyss upwards of five hundred feet deep.
On the east the drop was less fearful, but it fell sheer for the first fifty feet. The ridge was only three feet wide, and as we moved along, gingerly and one at a time, the slabs on which we trod rocked and grated together in an alarming way.
Then, after thirty or forty feet the going improved, and after rising further the ridge dropped gently into another saddle. The: climb out on the far side was steep, and we had to zig-zag up the slope, relying on projecting rocks and clumps of spinifex to prevent our feet slipping from under us.
The party was strung out to avoid danger from dislodged stones. I was in the lead at this stage, and after topping the last rise I could see the final shoulder of Cleft Peak close ahead. It was only about two hundred yards further on. The ridge was again narrow, and I followed upwards until it dropped again to a little saddle before continuing upward at a steepening angle.
I started up this slope. The drop on the right must have been nearer a thousand feet than five hundred feet now, and that on the left was greater than before.
I was helped at this stage by a pine growing right out of the ridge rocks, climbing into and through its friendly arms on to the slabs beyond.
The pile of slabs was a yard wide and they were loose and sloped down partly towards me and partly towards the drop into the Cleft on the right.
I crawled a few yards further, the slabs grinding together ominously the while. I stopped to look ahead. The slope steepened to sixty or seventy degrees.
On it were perched blocks of stone which looked as though they needed only a push to send them bounding into space. High up on the shoulder above a most delicately balanced rock seemed ready to fall and crush anyone daring to approach it.
I glanced at the slab on which I was sitting. The surface itself on which these slabs rested sloped steeply into the Cleft. It looked as if the whole lot might at any second go sliding over the precipice.
I hastily but carefully retreated, climbing through the branches of the pine and down to the little saddle where the others waited. We decided to call off the attempt. Cleft Peak could possibly be climbed from the north, but on such a shaky ruin of a ridge the game was hardly worth the candle.
We built a small cairn, leaving at note in a tin inside it before turning back. The immense western wall of the Cleft rose opposite us, with the rounded blue shapes of the central plateau crowding beyond. To the east stony hills dropped away, and the eye travelled over further ranges to the shimmering white line of Lake Frome on the horizon.
The rugged eastern side of the Gammon Ranges. Cleft Peak is the highpoint towards the right of the picture.
