Bushwalk Australia

yep, here you are! Weather was awesome for our night on the Bobs summit. Amazing night.

What time of year did you do this trip?
Just checked the EXIF data of your iPhone photos and got date 23/1/2012 - so mid summer with long days. Did you do Farmhouse Creek to top of Mt Bob's in one or two days?

You've done some excellent Photoshopping on those pics, but you can't fool me! THIS is what it was really like:

I can't actually remember when it was exactly but I'm fairly certain it was early Feb. Maybe late January.

Sorry to hear you didn't have the pick of days, NNW! The views from Bobs in the weather we had were tremendous.

It looks like I'll have to make another trip to Bob's when the weather conditions are just as you experienced them. Probably means being prepared to head down there at a day or two's notice when a big high is passing over Tasmania.

tas-man wrote:What time of year did you do this trip?
Just checked the EXIF data of your iPhone photos and got date 23/1/2012 - so mid summer with long days. Did you do Farmhouse Creek to top of Mt Bob's in one or two days?

How do you do those EXIF checks? Would be handy for someone like me who doesnt maintain very many records of the walks I do.

Our trip into Bobs was a one nighter. We walked into the summit of Bobs, via the Boomerang on day one and then explored the summit area and went quite a way down to Bobs Knobs the next day before walking all the way out.

We followed the "alternate route" from the sink holes at Sydney straight up The Boomerang, as listed in The Abels. We believe this to be a bad choice. It was intense scrub, very steep, and no leads/pads anywhere. Was just a super sweaty, thick and time consuming scrub fight. The usual route from the Bobs saddle is much easier.

Picasa is a good program to get this data. It can tell you lots of things. In this case the image is also geotagged and we can see where it was taken

Cheers tastrax, will be getting that!

creeping_moses wrote:How do you do those EXIF checks? Would be handy for someone like me who doesnt maintain very many records of the walks I do. <snip>

I use Graphic Converter on my Macs. Here's a screen shot of how it looks.

creeping_moses wrote:yep, here you are! Weather was awesome for our night on the Bobs summit. Amazing night.

Did you take any photos of these awesome views from the top of Mt Bobs?

tas-man wrote:Did you take any photos of these awesome views from the top of Mt Bobs?

Due to great dehydration, I failed to do so, as we were on a rampage to the tarns on the southern portion of the summit. Having looked at Stu's photos of the lakes from Bobs I regret not taking my camera as we explored the area after we had found water! Also, in stus pics looking at the Lakes, there is that tarn left of shot, as a much higher altitude. What is the name of this one? Is it named?

Here are some pics anyway (some from the Boomerang showing the lakes):

Great photos, great weather, great inspiration to go back again to see it like this.

Here's a photo I managed to get of Mt Bobs and Lake Sydney when flying back from Melaleuca earlier this year. There was a lot of atmospheric haze that day so I have had to enhance the contrast and saturation to bring out some detail.

As a kind of antidote to Stu's "Bobs and Boomerang in a day", I have posted my own attempt, entitled "Neither Bobs nor Boomerang in two days". The bush was VERY messy after winter; the ground was excessively soggy; it was raining; the days were too short (especially as we didn't start until 10.45). We had a lovely night by Lake Sydney and didn't actually bother attempting the mountain in the rain and mist at all.
Pics and story can be found in my blog: http://natureloverswalks.blogspot.com.a ... -days.html

Thanks for the read Naturelover I really enjoyed it. Sounds like leech haven! I must get in there soon, the area around the sinkhole looks amazing!

Yes, I want to see it too. The hole was buried very definitely under the lake when we were there. The blue line of our track ends at the water's edge. We decided not to swim for it (it being dark and all that jazz).

I'm yet to see the sinkhole completely dry. Last I was there was in April and we had to do some scrambling around in scrub to get around. One of these days I will camp there. First visit was a day trip to Bobs and the Boomerang, and the last trip we camped about 5 minutes in from the track turn off in a little clearing.

Yeah, that's the little clearing in my blog with two friendly snakes curled around each other .... but which uncurled in order to investigate us. As the investigation was mutual, it was OK.

Try the following link for photos of the walk in plus views from Bobs and The Boomerang

https://picasaweb.google.com/1140642448 ... eBoomerang

Best done as a 3 day walk as there is plenty to see and the walk in does take a while.

Trip Report:

I had a week off work recently that coincided with some stunning weather. I've been wanting to head out to PB for a while but decided against it do to my general lack of fitness at the moment. Instead I though a solo mission into lake sydney and trying to climb mt Bobs would be more appropriate.

Left the Jeep at farmhouse creek at midday with the temperature nudging 30 degrees. Having not carried a full pack since May i was sweating buckets. I refilled my 2 Litre camelback just before departing the creek as the track climbs toward the saddle and gets muddier. I found the turnoff tree easily, turning onto the pad through cutting grass and bauera bush. The ridge seemed to go on for ever and was made even tougher in the heat. By the time I popped out of the king billy forest and onto the knoll I had drained my camelbak once again. The view to the eastern Arthurs from here was great so i took some photos, ate an orange and pressed on hoping to find a spring or trickle of water.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb8LlQiD9hz/?taken-by=tdeueb
Finally the track started to descend into the jungle and i found a small trickle of water where i was able to refill and rehydrate. This had the effect now of completely unbalancing my electrolyte levels and soon cramp was becoming a real issue! Some salt and vinegar chips kept them from becoming too bad as i reached the bottom of the hill and promptly fell into a bog that was easily waist deep.

The last kilometre was super tough as I pushed through the swamp and into the king billy forest near the sink hole. The sink was dry with some great campsites but a quick recon around the eastern shore revealed and even better site under some giant tea trees. The lake was lovely and warm to have a quick dip before collapsing in a heap. somewhere around 7:30pm I found enough energy to cook some dinner. All up it had taken about 6 hours from the car to the lake.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb0_C1SDD21/?taken-by=tdeueb

The next morn was clear and warm. I set off to climb mt Bobs at about 9am but due to the thick scrub, a number of diversions, general exhaustion i didn't make the saddle until almost midday. A kind of route has been taped through the forest following a water course but it is easy to lose and find yourself confronted with a wall of scrub or a small cliff line. I sat on the saddle in a small patch of shade. I considered climbing the open slabs to the summit in the heat. But decided to bash back down to the lake. Even though i didn't get to the top I really enjoyed the challenging bush and the waratahs that were out in flower.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb0-JL6Dxy8/?taken-by=tdeueb

I spent the rest of the arvo reading and drinking wine at my shady campsite only moving to cook some more food, of which i had brought far too much.
The next morning I bash my way back out to the car find the return trip only slightly easier. Just before getting back to the car i got rained on by a passing storm and almost stepped on a large tiger snake basking on the Picton Rd near the footbridge over farmhouse creek.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb1mwVYDjDL/?taken-by=tdeueb

All up it was a great little trip. A fantastic mini test piece. I will be going back once the scratches heal and i buy a new shirt. My poor hard yakka hiking shirt was torn to shreds.

Tom

Getting up to the saddle is so much easier if you go around the other side of the lake.

north-north-west wrote:Getting up to the saddle is so much easier if you go around the other side of the lake.

As in the northern side?
That must depend on the water level in the lake I suspect as the 2 times i've been up there it has been a very short, easy walk around the southern edge of the lake to a point where it is then easy to climb up to the saddle. Where as the northern shore looks a much longer route.

No, I meant I should have checked which way he went before opening my big fat mouth.
But it isn't that hard. I did Farmhouse, Sydney,saddle,Boomerang, saddle in a day. Bobs the next. Maybe for once through some lucky fluke I managed to avoid all the yucky stuff.

That's a pretty big day! Especially after the Farmhouse slog!

Spent the previous night near the bridge,so no driving. Longish day but well worth it and the conditions were perfect for walking - not too hot,no rain, a certain amount of bog-dodging to avoid the waist deep stuff . . . But I;d been told the scrub was pretty nasty and was surprised at how easy the climb up from Sydney was. And found a good pad up onto the Boomerang, so no scrub there either.

I've been up Bobs and Boomerang in a day (I don't recommend this!), and have had a return trip to the Boomerang, camping at a clearing near the track junction. Both times I went up the eastern side of the lake. There are random tapes in places, but none are very helpful. The forest was fairly open, I can only remember one small scrub band up to the base of a cliff. Next time I'll go back for a summit camp I think.

I think if i went back i would def find it easier. The benefit of experience!

I went round the east side of the lake initially but found myself getting tracked away from the lake in some cliffy terrain so i went back round the west shore as suggested in the abels track notes.
I also buggered about deciding which creek to follow from the sth end of the lake which wasted more time.

I certainly made things harder for myself than they needed to be but in the end it was the heat of the day that was the biggest contributor to my descision to turn around. Still good fun tho!

Definitely stay on the east. Sounds like pazzar went up the same what I did, following the base of a cliffline for a while. It's probably the easiest route to the saddle, no scrub, just the usual dodge and weave through forest.

Giving this old thread a bump, with a screen shot of the latest Google Earth image dated March 2021 of the empty sinkholes at the east end of Lake Sydney. For comparison an earlier Google Earth image from 2013 shows how full Lake Sydney can get. Has anyone been in to Bobs/Boomerang recently?

Haven't been there but the latest LISTmap shows the track/pad to Bobs and Boomerang passing over the water body at the NE end of the lake