Bushwalk Australia

Well Toni first of all thankyou for coming on the walk with me as you haven't done
many walks i think you did a dandy job well done.

Now we left at 9am after Toni giving me the hurry along approach. Andy you think im bad,
anyway we packed up a day pack with a few things like Coffee and salad rolls , put on the warm gear and hit the road.
I must say it was very frosty and the road conditions were a bit out there,as we were heading into a right hand corner going into Waratah you Guessed it BLACK ICE
yes yours Truley lost control of the Triton. She was all over the road like it was an ice skating rank.
But with Toni's help Grabbing on to the BB Jesus bar and trying to straighten the road out we were all ok. im happy i was only doing about 80ks.

Soon we arrived at the turn off to philosophers falls

We found a parking spot and headed of dow the track to philosophers falls witch was about
45 mins one way it was a well maintained track but it was a down hill walk but only a small
grade to the foot bridge .

Then it was a flat walk that followed the old water tail race this was a tad muddy in places,
up untill we come to the steps that went down to a veiwing platform where we had lunch
and a 20 min rest period before headding back up the 240 steps to the top of the track.


photos of philosophers falls from the platform

Soon we were on our way out and back to the car and on the way out
Cheers Simmo

Just a few more photos

Fantastic track work here Simmo! Did you notice the old track to the bottom of the falls.

Gerry

Hi Gerry sorry we didn't get to see the bottom track but i would have liked to get down the bottom of the falls.
Cheers Simmo

Has anyone been to the bottom of Philosophers Falls lately? There is/was a tagged route so just wondering what sort of condition it's in.

I was down there with grankids and elderly relatives a couple of weeks ago, from what I've googled they [ council ?? ] spent about $1 million upgradeing the track which is great and very user friendly for those not so mobile, my understanding is they realigned the track to the other side of the river following the old Magnet mine waterrace. You get to the steps in Simmo's pic.'s [ just over 200 of them ] but the track continues on , I think in a loop back to the car park , it may be that a track down to the bottom of the falls would be found by continuing on this track, I was planning going back some time to have a crack at this because the view from the platform was pretty limited. We took some interstate relatives , non bushwalkers, who just loved the walk so it's a great place to send non-walkers to get a taste of the bushwalking experience and the kids loved the aray of fungi to see.

We went in February, but did not have time to head all the way down to the bottom falls but it seemed you could continue down the water race from the old mine. I agree that one of the highlights was the really vibrant coloured fungi.

Any other news re getting to the bottom?
We visited the Falls on Saturday (pics and story in blog), but were terribly disappointed when the track ended at the top. So we climbed back up the steps to the main track, continued along it briefly, and then dived for the bottom - which we reached, but still did not get a good view of the falls. Next tactic was to go up a bit, traverse some more, and drop again to reach the Arthur river a bit nearer to the sound of falling water - but a sighting of the falls still eluded us. They were always just around the corner. I was not in boots, and had a lot of camera gear slung around my neck (tripod, GND filters, spare lenses etc) and a husband with me who had already far exceeded my expectations of what he could manage, so I withdrew. Next time I'm trying over the other side, wearing boots, camera gear in a pack, and probably, alas, no husband.
( http://natureloverswalks.blogspot.com.au )