Yass District: Mundoonen Nature Reserve North of the Hume Highway

General Information

Grading:  medium

Distance:   10.5 kilometers

Total climb:   470 meters

Time taken:   3 hours 40 minutes

Maps:   Jerrawa 8728-3N 1:25 000

Start point distance by road from Canberra GPO:   65 kilometers

Start point map grid reference:  Jerrawa 55H FB 872782 44043

Destination map grid reference:  Jerrawa 55H FB 87286 47036

End point:  Same as start

Route

Description

The Mundoonen Nature Reserve straddles the Hume Highway between Yass and Gunning. We decided to do the smaller section of the Reserve north of the Hume Highway. Our starting point was the Sheldricks Lane turnoff, about 3.4 kilometres along the Hume Highway from its intersection with Yass Valley Way.

Our first task was to climb up the access road to the summit of Mt Mundoonen. Unfortunately there are only limited views here due to the surrounding forest, but it's another peak to take off my list.

Passing the trig marker we continued to the end of the paved road near the towers in the distance. At the point we turned left to follow the ridge heading a bit east of north. The top of the ridge is easy walking through dry sclerophyll forest.

We followed the ridge until we came to a knoll at map reference 55H FB 87231 45102. Ahead of us was a deep gully with another hill on the other side, so we started to walk down the ridge on the left before heading north again at a lower elevation. We found a couple of mostly dry watercourses which were quite nice to walk along while they took us in roughly the right direction.

At map reference 55H FB 87008 46349 we found the abandoned farmhouse complex which we had heard about, all still in very good condition. We paused there for lunch.

From the farmhouse we made our way to the dam at map reference 55H FB 87196 46802...

...and from there continued north to the boundary fence of the Nature Reserve. We followed the boundary fence to the east, which took us to the hill at the end of the ridge we followed from Mt. Mundoonen.

There were some nice rural views to the north from there

We followed the ridge all the way back to Mt. Mundoonen and our starting point, including this time the steep hill we avoided on the outward journey.