Angophoras after the rain

Photographed yesterday in the Berowra Valley National Park, in the Pennant Hills area.

Ode to the fire trail

In this case one of the fire trails of the Berowra Valley National Park, near Arthurs Circle in Mt Colah.

In the pecking order of bushwalking routes, the humble fire trail has a somewhat lowly status. But at this time of year especially, it can offer a very pleasant and rewarding experience.

Attractive wildflowers, happy songbirds, scribbly gums, beautiful Sydney red gums, and quite dramatic vistas across the Berowra Valley.

 

I'm sure the trails around there have existed for a long time, but I only just discovered them, courtesy of the new map that just got printed. The National Park was only gazetted a couple of years ago, hence the map. Incidentally, they don't sell maps at many of the outdoor/bushwalking type shops anymore. Everyone relies on their GPS or their phone apps. I had to go to the specialist map shop in Parramatta.

A marathon day out

It's 42 or so kilometres from Hornsby to Brooklyn, and that makes it an ideal candidate for a marathon-length walk for my bushwalking group. We usually take 13 hours or so over these little expeditions, but the surplus of big hills on this part of the Great North Walk, and a somewhat unsettling navigational blunder, meant that this one blew out to about 15.


In fact there were lots of little adventures and challenges. There was an Eastern brown snake (which I've since read is the world's second most venomous land-based snake! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_brown_snake) Then, after dark, there were lots of enormous spider webs to walk into, with enormous garden orb weaver spiders hanging upside down in them. Fortunately these spiders are reluctant to bite, and their bite is relatively harmless. I just read that they weave their webs every evening, and then take them down again in the morning!

Another unexpected obstacle was the half-marathon trail-running event we discovered, and they were coming the other way! We dodged out of the way of about 270 mostly very fit looking participants of the 'Galston Gutbuster', an event which starts and finishes in Hornsby Park, we found out. Here are a couple of videos, one that's mostly us crossing the old wartime 'Steele Bridge' between groups of runners, and the other of the runners in full flight.

And of course we needed to cross Calna Creek, whose bridge collapsed a couple of years ago.
Fortunately it was low tide when we got there, and the 2-metre depth signs were showing much less than this, so no great dramas here.

The biggest drama was the unexpected separation into two groups event (USITGE), followed by the wandering around a pointless little loop track event (WAPLLTE), the totally misunderstood phone conversation about locations event (TMPCALE), and the wasting an hour or two missing trains and discussing what had gone wrong event (WHOTMTDWHGWE).

It was all a bit much for 50% of the party, who perhaps wisely chose to drop out at Cowan, (where some promptly missed their drop-out train in the attempt!)

The remaining three of us pushed on regardless, thinking we might just make it to Brooklyn in time for the 7:38pm train back. If not, we would comfortably make the 9:05pm one. It got dark, as it does. No problem, we had torches, we knew the track well, and the last few kilometres were on good fire trails. Progress seemed swift. We got a bit too comfortable about it though. We had a pleasant break on the rocky lookout above the Hawkesbury River, and we spent time admiring and photographing those enormous spiders. There was  no chance of making our 9:05pm train. The next one was 10:05pm,and that would be the last for another hour and a half.




 Suddenly it was 9:55pm and we were still 1.3km from the station! I calculated we could just make it, but only if we ran all the way! Not something you expect at the end of a 42km day. And we made it onto that 10:05pm train with perhaps one second to spare!

I'm feeling good about it now though, and I'm sure we'll do it all again next year!

'Spiderman' picture courtesy Fiona B
Steele Bridge picture courtesy the helpful 'Galston Gutbuster' marshal there