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Wog-Wog to Styles Creek in a larger map
Note: indicated routes are approximate. Use official topographic maps for navigation.
Note: indicated routes are approximate. Use official topographic maps for navigation.
Wog-Wog to Styles Creek
This is a reasonably easy four day walk from the Wog-Wog entrance (near Braidwood) to the Styles Creek campsite (near the base of Quiltys Mountain) and back again. The first campsite is at Canowie Brook or maybe a few hundred metres further along beside Burrumbeet Brook. There's a toilet block at the Burrumbeet Brook campsite.
The tracks from Wog-Wog up to the base of Mount Tarn are fairly well defined, but from there the route is a bit overgrown. Getting up on to Mount Tarn involves battling through stands of banksias that have overgrown the track, and then following the small rock cairns until you can pick up the main track again. Much of that section has been hardened with duckboards, but that too is starting to get overgrown with tussocks.
Getting off Mount Tarn and around the base of Mount Haughton is relatively easy, although there's a fair bit of scrambling over fallen logs and slippery rocks and undergrowth to contend with. The track passes through a grotto where there's usually enough trickling water to replenish your supplies, but don't count on it if there's been an extended dry spell - its catchment is the relatively small area on top of Mount Haughton.
The route leaves the base of Mt Haughton and heads initially north-east then east down a broad spur at a dry rock overhang. The track isn't really obvious here, but if you stick to the middle of the spur you should pick up some small rock cairns within a few hundred metres. Once the spur flattens out and starts to merge into the plain that forms the Styles Creek catchment, stick to the east, close to Mount Sturgiss to avoid the swampy parts that feed the creek itself. Again, the track is not all that well defined here, but usually discernible.
At some point you have to cross some of the swampy parts to get to the campsite, which is located on the south side of the creek where the track coming in from The Vines and Hidden Valley crosses it. This usually involves picking your way between tussocks and avoiding the deeper pools, but with any luck you'll get across with dry feet.
Follow the same route back to Wog-Wog
Looking north from Corang Arch
Looking back to Corang Peak, with Dave Singleton checking the lay of the land.
Afternoon near the Canowie Brook campsite, with the sun setting on the appropriately named Profile Rock.
Looking east from Yurnga Lookout (marked on the Corang 1:25000 topo map). The pointy feature on the horizon is Pigeon House, with the flat-topped Mount Owen and Mount Cole to the left of that.
Early morning at the Styles Creek campsite
We didn't actually make it up Mt Sturgiss on this trip. We had plans to try and find a way up from Styles Creek instead of following the usual route in through Hidden Valley, but we ran out of time. Looking at the topo map and satellite photo, it's tempting to think that such a route is possible. If you've done it, please get in touch.
To give you an idea of what it's like on top, I've included this view from a previous walk
This is one of the first decent images I ever made with my Tachihara 4x5 field camera. In 1995, Rob Gray and I hiked in to the Styles Creek area from Newhaven Gap, and then made the slightly perilous scramble up onto Mt Sturgiss.
It's taken with a very wide angle lens (65mm - equivalent to about a 19mm lens on a 35mm-frame camera), which only just covered the 4"x5" frame. I was just getting the hang of large-format photography at the time, and the technical quality of the negative won't win any prizes, but I still like the composition. You can see there's quite a bit of falloff in the corners, which I've partially corrected, and the whole negative is a bit thin.
Rob also got a great shot from about the same spot, but using a very different field of view.
The sun rising on Hoddles Castle Hill, with a full moon setting to the west.
Quiltys Mountain through the clearing fog.
From the track around the base of Mount Haughton.