A geomorphic intrusion of the upper cleft palate*

There was another good Scout camp this weekend, with the usual collection of amusements, activities, achievements and so forth.

One of the highlights, for me, was the half-day leisurely hike we did on Saturday to a gully in the bush a couple of kilometres from the campsite. I’ll confess there were a couple of geocaches in the vicinity, which were what prompted the walk … but without them I’d never have known about the place.

The gully is formed by a little creek that has cut its way through the conglomerate rock (a conglomerate is a sedimentary rock type where the rock is actually made up of pebbles that have fallen into a matrix of fine sand and then it’s all been solidified**). There were big boulders (one of the Scouts nearly managed to strand himself on top of one), and a little ravine where the creek had gouged deeply into the rock to create the valley.

At the top end of the track the bush opened up, and there were some striking outcrops and tiny trickles of waterfalls over the little escarpments, sort of like an Australian version of what I imagine Swallowdale to look like***.

Anyway, we had an enjoyable time exploring the area, clambering over the small cliffs and following the creek in its rock-cutting course to the top of one of the falls (see photo at right, although the water is all but invisible).

We then set aside the GPSrs, got out the more traditional compasses and I had the Scouts navigate back to camp directly over the hill through the bush. There was a typical tendency for the lie of the land to “pull” everyone off course, and I confess I used my GPSr to nudge us back towards the correct direction … but the Scouts actually did quite well with their navigation, especially considering the density of the bush and the steep terrain.

*Family in-joke: this was used by us kids to describe any geological feature we came across, with the urgent requirement being to name the feature as such before Dad had a chance to start telling us its real name, life history, chemical composition, Mohr hardness, bank account details, etc, etc.

** Bother. I was supposed to say it was a geomorphic intrusion of the upper cleft palate. I can’t hide the fact that I am my father’s daughter.

*** From the second book in the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome.