Went on an NPAQ pre-outing with mum and some of her friends to Kipper Creek, in the Deongwar State Forest near Esk. Got reaquainted with all the joys of bushwalking. And why we call it bushwalking, not hiking. Great way to start the year. Started off ok. We met a nice guy, Derek, at the carpark, and he was headed for the same area as us, and it started off with some easy walking down a fire road bast some apiaries.

Soon it was downhill, and off the track. Into the scrub. Lantana, and various other sub-tropical forest prickly shrubbery. We did some serious bashing, some serious downclimbing, some wading, a lot of walking, some rock hopping, and I didn't bring enough food.

We also found an abandoned camp, with two tents, airbeds, and various other garbage. We reported it to the police, but it looks like some people got hit by some rain, and left with the light stuff.

Couldn't really recommend the route to anyone. There was bugger all water, which was our hope. We found a carpet snake, looking extremely sick and starved. The walk back up from the creek junction was much nicer than the way we went down, but still not incredible. This branch would be pretty incredible with a lot of water, but then, LOTS of places are pretty incredible with lots of water going through them. Eventually it was time to break out of the creek, and after a pretty steep slog up onto the ridge, it was just a long gradual walk back along the ridge, eventually rejoining the forestry road we'd came in on.Good company, but there's much nicer places to go. Still, it had to be checked out, and checked off.