Sundown offers a terrain of deeply incised creeks, gorges, waterfalls and steep stony ridges rising to over 1000 metres on the Roberts Range. Others claim that the name is in keeping with the tradition of using astronomical place names in the area, but I couldn’t find much evidence for this interpretation, apart from references to Comet Creek, Comet Mine, and Arcturus Mine. Some say that the name Sundown is said to come from the idea that its valleys are so deep that it’s always ‘Sundown’. But I can always rely on Brian to trawl through his map cupboard and come up with something decent in this case an “exploratory” into northern Sundown National Park, south-west of Stanthorpe. Skirting a large waterhole on the Severn River, Sundown NPĪs more and more wilderness areas fall to incursions of the Great Walk track builders, ‘tell-all’ guidebooks and those viral GPS track logs, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a throughwalk that still has some tantalising unknowns.Strangely though, I have rarely seen him brandishing a compass and never a GPS. There’s nothing much he likes better than to spread out a map, trace a finger along ridge and river and, hey presto a walk is born. With the Easter long weekend closing in, I wasn’t surprised when my bushwalking friend Brian appeared at the front door clutching one of his well-used topo maps and muttering about “getting away from the crowds over Easter.” Here’s a thing about Brian.

Topographic map of high tor state park