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Mount Corang / Corang Peak

by Murray Dow

Time: 5 hours

Distance: 16 km

Maps: Corang 1:25000 or CMW Northern Budawang range 1:50000 sketch map

Take with you: Water, lunch.

Access: Take the Mongarlowe road east from Braidwood. Follow the sealed road straight through Mongarlowe; it soon becomes gravel.

Watch for the Morton National Park sign on the right 1.2km past Wog Wog station or 38.5 km from Braidwood - it is easy to miss. There there are fireplaces and toilet.

The forests, cliffs and rivers of the Budawang-Morton National park are well known to bushwalkers but much of the area is inaccessible to the casual day-walker. The Wog-Wog entrance is less than two hours drive from Canberra and the track into Corang lagoon is easy walking and navigation. The track curves downhill through dwarf Casuarina, yellow flowers of a cone bush and purple kunzea parvifolia to Wog Wog creek, which you can usually step across if the creek is low. In the thick vegetation along the creek a whip bird called as we made our way uphill past a hut ruin on the left.

In this floristically rich area round-leaf tea tree (Leptospermum rotundifolium) with its large white-pink flowers was the most prominent.

When I got home I discovered that we had it in our own garden. The vegetation of this section is similar to the Corn trail.

After walking for 1 hour you reach Tinderry lookout on a conglomerate outcrop, and just along the track is Picnic cave. About ten minutes later the track descends to a broad saddle, where there is a budawang mallee, which for me typifies why the Budawangs is such a special area.

Ignore a faint track leading out onto the swamp and walk across the saddle until the track starts to rise again.

There is an arrow on a tree and cairns, where you turn left, (the right branch goes to Corang Peak). After seven minutes cross a small creek and then after 13 minutes the track descends a narrow quartzite ridge to Goodsell Creek. The track is 5m upstream and well marked by white tape on a tree.

On a hot day you can walk downstream a short distance to a small swimming hole.

The track then climbs onto a delightful heath, through Boronia rhomboidea and views of cliffs and then into a forest. Here there are numerous sour currant bushes, the green fruit making a fine refreshment for a bushwalker. The track then crosses three small creeks along which you can see the toothed leaves of callicoma, then across another heath dotted with boronia and mallee.

Watch for white markers where the track is faint. About 45 minutes from the creek the track drops into the Corang Lagoon camping area, set amongs Hakea dactyloides (finger hakea). This area is now rather over-used, the vegetation trampled and there are many large fireplaces. Hidden in the scrub, a waratah was flowering by the lagoon.

If you follow the track through coral fern and river rocks downstream you reach the best swimming hole I know - a deep pool with spa and double waterfall. Opposite was leatherwood and another brilliant red waratah, two rare and vulnerable plants, and on the left bank the remains of a water race that was 40km long. It was built from 1886-90 for gold sluicing on the Shoalhaven River. If you sit quietly by the lagoon you may see an Azure Kingfisher (Alcedo azurea) dart by, or hear the pilot bird's vivacious whistles as it flies unseen through the thick riverside bush.