Sunday 6 May we walked the west branch of Love Creek, which I have been looking forward to doing again since Andrew and his brother Brendan showed it to me last year. This time the party was the Andersens (Baz, Sandy, and their son Corey) and I, with me doing an unconvincing job as leader. This is not a remote area, so we left the wet weather and emergency overnight gear at home making our packs much lighter. Baz had his excellent GPS receiver coupled by bluetooth to his PDA which runs Ozi Explorer (map software), and I had a compass and a map (Brisbane Forest Park Information Map - a gem), and an A4 enlargement of that map showing the walk area. Baz had the same A4 map loaded into Ozi Explorer as a jpg image file. We had mobiles and UHF handhelds in case something went awry.
We met at Maiala car park, just west of Mt Glorious township, at 7.30am, and after shuttling to drop off the second vehicle at the end of Alex Rd (which is not labelled on the map, but ends at 753 782), we started the walk at 7.45am. The walk-in on the graded track to Greens Falls (764 776 on the map) was a pleasant warm-up. We stopped at the falls so Baz could start the GPS tracking on the jpg map he had calibrated, and Corey promptly found a huge carpet snake laying on the rocks below (see photo below). The poor fella was very unwell due to an injury to his head/neck. Perhaps the humane thing may have been to kill him, but I don't know enough about snakes to write him off, so we left him there.
The descent along Cedar Creek to the junction with Love Creek (772 781 on the map) was steeper than I remembered, and provided plenty of opportunity to practice the scrambling skills that are needed later. Cedar Creek was almost completely dry with no running water, and I was disappointed by this until the dry rock proved fortuitous when Corey had a particularly interesting descent of one of the cascades on which he encountered an overhang near the bottom. We had morning tea at the junction, which is an absolutely lovely spot, and enjoyed the first sounds of running water we had heard so far - Love Creek was still flowing.
The ascent to Love Creek falls (767 784 on the map) was as much fun as I remembered, with the dryer rock allowing faster progress than last time. Corey and I climbed a small way up the falls to get our photo taken, before joining Baz and Sandy in taking the easier and slightly less steep route to the right of the falls. Lunch was at 11.30am at the top of the falls where we (boys) laid out our shirts to dry while we all ate and enjoyed the sun.
Ascending the west branch of Love Creek afforded a few minor misadventures, as I fell in a pool of water after foolishly stepping onto a slippery rock (to the great amusement of the rest of the party) and Baz encountered a stinging plant (much less amusing). Shortly after, Corey also took a spill in a pool, but his lacked the undignified bum-first entry of mine. I had forgotten how dark and spooky it gets in this thickly canopied creek-line in the afternoon, and by 1.30pm it was virtually twilight. We made excellent time on this upper section of the creek, which is my excuse for misjudging which creek junction we were at, thus causing us to have to backtrack a short way after Baz got a lock with the trusty GPS.
Once we confirmed our position, we took a well worn track SW then W up the ridge from the creek junction at 758 785. This track got us back by 2.15pm to the vehicle we left on Alex Rd, from which we quickly shuttled back to pick up the other vehicle from Maiala. The day ended with coffee, cake, and toasted sandwiches at a Mt Glorious cafe.
