Over the years, we’ve heard a lot about Bright and how nice the place is, & as it’s only a bit over an hour from the farm that we had been helping out at, it made sense to go and take a look!
Bright & early, we made it to Bright. The town was beautiful with large trees on the sides of the roads, rustic buildings, creeks and grass patches, although we couldn’t help but stare up at Mount Buffalo that towered above the town in the near distance, so we checked into the caravan park, set up next to the river and began researching some trails while sitting on the bank with our feet dangling in the water.
The caravan park was a treat of it’s own, making it an easy decision to spend the rest of the day there, playing games and making the most of the river.
Read more about Mount Buffalo Caravan Park.
We woke up fresh the next morning, stretched our legs and drove up into the mountains to the Mount Buffalo National Park.
There are a lot of cool places within a pretty short distance of each other that we wanted to take a look at. Eva found a track on AllTrails that joined a heap of different hiking trails together in a bit of a loop, allowing us to see a bunch of different sites on the one walk. We kind of made up our own slightly different version and called it the Mount Buffalo Circuit Walk.
Starting at Lake Catani, we followed the trail into the forest and down to the “Underground River”.
The Underground River was exactly what we expected: an underground river.
After descending down a short steep trail, in the middle of a valley was a pile of boulders with the water streaming below. There’s actually even an underground track that follows the river, but we didn’t dare to enter and started feeling a bit of claustrophobia just at the thought of it.
We made our way up the other side of the valley and popped out on top of a huge cliff that looks out over Bright, down to where we got our first view of Mount Buffalo the morning before.
Not much further down the trail, on the same cliff, we reached Mount Buffalo Lookout, just in front of the huge old and impressive Mount Buffalo Chalet that was built in the early 1900’s.
It was time for lunch, but this spot was super busy as you can drive right up there, so we walked a bit further to Pulpit Rock Lookout, passing Crystal Brook Falls on the way.
After refuelling, it was time to head to the highlight of the hike and the highest point we’d reach on the trail, The Monolith.
It ended up being pretty bizarre and amazing, some big boulder sitting right on top of a mountain, although it was cause for celebration and we were stoked to have made it!
We hung out up there for a while and then made our way back to Lake Catani.
We were pretty pumped when we got back to the car. The entire trail was about 10-11 kms, but it wasn’t much of challenge and interesting the whole way as we went past so many cool places, so we decided to add in another hike for the day.
Read more about the Mount Buffalo Circuit Walk.
Only about a 20 minute drive away was ‘The Horn‘, the highest peak in Mount Buffalo National Park and you can almost drive to the top, so we went and took a look.
Within about 15 minutes, we reached the summit and got ourselves some incredible views across the national park. The landscape was a lot different to where we had just been hiking. The huge trees and abundance of vegetation was swapped out for a vast rocky terrain.
Read more about hiking to the summit of The Horn.
What a day!
The next morning, we found a really decent free camp called Ah Youngs Campsite, just below Mount Buffalo, right in the bush next to the Buckland River. As far as free camps go, this was a good one and as we run an online business and often have to been on the computer and phones in most of our spare time, it was great to handball things off to Mum and go offline for a few days, as there was no phone reception or data service.
Read more about Ah Youngs Free Campsite.
This was the perfect place to rest and recharge. We spent a lot of time swimming and fishing in the river, roasting marsh mellows on the fire, then a storm rolled through, which was perfect for us as we got caught up on a few TV series and plenty of board games.
Eventually, it was time to tend to business. We headed into Bright and found a picnic table in the shade next to a creek, then got to work by catching up on our camping shop & travel blog.
If you’re been to Mount Buffalo and/or Bright before, let us know what you thought in the comments section below! Likewise if you have any questions.
Next up: We’re going to head further into the mountains and hike to the summit of Australia’s highest peak, Mount Kosiosko!