Wednesday Walk: Gibraltar Peak, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, Canberra

Gibraltar Peak is a mountain in the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, 40 minutes from Canberra, Australia. Its elevation of 1,038 metres (3,406 feet) makes Gibraltar Peak the 45th highest mountain in the Australian Capital Territory.

There are two tracks leading to the summit of the mountain: the long track to the peak is 13 kilometres (8 miles), created in 2012 in conjunction with the Ngunnawal people, the owners of the land. The old short track is 8 kilometres (5 miles).

Gibraltar Peak is a series of granite monoliths, and the path to the peak winds over creeks, around gullies and through open grassland. There is a picnic table at the Mt Eliza saddle, at about the halfway mark. It was named after the wife of early settler George Webb.

From the picnic table one track leads up to Gibraltar Peak (1.8 kilometres away) and the other track leads down the eastern slopes of Eliza to Birrigai and back to the start of the walk at the Tidbinbilla Visitors Centre.

The last 200 metres of the track passes though a labyrinth of 400-million-year-old granite rocks.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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