Goochs Crater and surrounds on the Newnes Plateau is a very interesting area full of large rock pagodas and hidden valleys. It’s technically in the Blue Mountains but looks a lot like the typical terrain of neighbouring Gardens of Stone National Park. Depending on road conditions and whether you have a 4wd, some of the walk in will be on fire trails and perhaps less interesting. But the excellent and ancient looking landforms at the turnaround point will be worth it.
Route notes at the end. If you’d like a ‘family friendly’ walk through very impressive pagoda country then try the newly constructed track through the Lost City near Lithgow. You’ll be joined by many others, so a less immersive experience than this walk, but the scenery is top class.
Goochs Crater Route: The Scenery
Route Notes
The route you take to Goochs Crater will depend on your transport – 4wd or 2wd – and the conditions of the fire trails for driving. These will be more challenging after wet weather, which is when we went. Driving as far as you can will actually leave only a short walk to the crater, so stopping early as we did is not so bad. We wanted to stretch our legs a bit. Our route required navigation but involved time spent away from fire trails, which made it feel more like a proper bushwalk.
Our route as marked in red
Driving
At a curve in Old Bells Line of Road we turned right onto the Wollangambe Trail. In a 2wd you’ll need to park here and walk the rest of the way. In our AWD SUV we continued along the trail down a steep and rutted section, hitting the bottom of the vehicle a couple of times. A little further along there is a dip in the road that was full of muddy water after rain. We weren’t sure how capable our vehicle was, and also not sure how deep the pool was, so we parked there and walked the rest of the way. (I’ve marked this spot as the start on my embedded map below).
The driving route in Blue Mountains Best Bush Walks is to continue on this trail. Keep left at a clearing, then continuing roughly straight (ignoring the right turn). Then keep right (ignoring the left turns) until you reach the start of the walk as marked by the blue line on my map. You can apparently drive up the trail marked in blue as well to make it quite a short walk to the crater.
If you are walking the whole way and want to avoid off track navigation then you can walk these sections as described. We took a short cut however…
Walking
We walked the first bit of this route, but took the obvious right turn onto another fire trail. This trail drops down a long slope, and you eventually reach a clearing. On the topo map there is a fire trail marked on the left that we planned to follow, but this looks to have long grown over.
Off track navigation
From this point you can roughly follow the route on the map marked as fire trails, which I’ve marked with a dotted red line.
You have to walk left into the bush for a couple of minutes, where you can pick up an impact track. Take this down into a valley. At the bottom of the valley you will see some fallen trees. In December 2024 there were a couple of branches with obvious pink tape on them. From here start to head up the opposite slope but keep right (SE) rather than heading straight up (NE). You will soon find another impact track which you can follow for a while. This will eventually disappear, but if you continue on for a minute or two through the bush you will see what looks like a washed out fire trail on your left. Whatever it is, you can follow this, and the faint track that eventually forms, right up until the start of the ‘official’ track to Goochs Crater.
Goochs Crater
The track to Goochs Crater is on a sometimes rocky ridge, but is easy to follow. You’ll soon see various large rock pagodas straight ahead. The crater is in amongst it. You can explore the pagodas, taking care not to stand on the thin fragile rock. (You’ll see that quite a bit has been broken, perhaps by previous walkers.)
You can take one of the tracks down into Goochs Crater, and walk along the eastern rim to the southern end. From there you can keep left, and curl around to walk north into an atmospheric ferny section with rocky overhangs and caves. From there it is possible to climb a steep rock slope, back up onto the tops. You are now on the other side of the crater to when you arrived. From there head north along the top of the eastern rim and back to the main track.
I also took a faint track down into the valley on the western side to have a quick look. It’s nice enough, and there was running water down there. (I realise now, looking at the map, that you could head up that valley to get back to the fallen trees and pink tape, but it is likely rather boggy.)
Retrace your steps. Note that as you climb out of the valley from the fallen trees/ pink tape, the impact track you take keeps going and takes you away from the main fire trail. I don’t know where it goes, but to take the same route back you have to leave that track and walk through the bush for a couple of minutes to pick up the fire trail that takes you up the hill.
Alternate Route
Here is a link to an alternate route described by Oliver at Hiking the World (lots of walks on Oliver’s blog) that doesn’t require a 4WD, but is a harder route than the ‘standard route’.
