Date: Sunday 17th April 2015
Track: For the most part, the track follows the old Great North Road. It’s hilly, and rocky or sandy mostly, sometimes muddy, partly along dirt roads. The total length is 18 kilometres. There are some very well made sections, with wonderfully wrought stairs. Mostly, though, it’s a rough going, with some high step-ups and step-downs. Many sections cross broad, fascinatingly patterned rock platforms. It’s a steep, scrambling descent to Wondabyne Station. Overall grade medium to hard.
Weather: Overcast, around 20 degrees C for most of the day. Very humid. Rain for the last hour. Just as the rain started, we had the wits scared out of us by a lightning strike somewhere close to us. The bush all around was suddenly suffused by bright shimmering light, followed immediately by a horrifyingly loud, prolonged peal of thunder!
Access: Diana and I travelled by train to Hawkesbury River Station, where we met up with the others who had driven to Brooklyn. We had booked a water taxi to take us across the Hawkesbury and downstream to sleepy Patonga, a 20 minute trip, $120 for the four of us.
At the end of the walk, we emerged out of the bush onto a very picturesque reach of the Hawkesbury, at Wondabyne Station. It’s only one carriage-length long, and you have to flag down the train if you want to get on.
If you want to do the walk the other way, you have to tell the train guard that you want you get off at Wondabyne, or the train doesn’t stop.
Roger and Daniel travelled only one stop, back to Hawkesbury River Station, to pick up their cars. Diana and I rested our weary bones and enjoyed the scenery all the way to Central Station.
Who: Peter, Diana, Roger, Daniel
Duration: About seven and a half hours, with plenty of breaks. It would be hard to go much faster, but the views towards Broken Bay, the rock formations and the diversity of plants, all quite unspoiled make one disinclined to hurry anyway.
Comments: I highly recommend travelling by train. It’s very relaxing, and the line passes through some beautiful scenery. Far better than spoiling a lovely walk by having to negotiate Sydney roads!
Brooklyn is a pleasant secluded township, with a decent pub and good fish and chips! We had an excellent coffee at Patonga before setting out.
The water taxi may sound expensive, but it’s really the only option. It’s cheaper per person for bigger groups: $100 for first 2 passengers, then $10 each for the rest.
Wondabyne Station is just a siding, perched on the bank of the Hawkesbury. A cheerful station attendant was there to greet us (or perhaps just a helpful local), who lived across the river and rowed across to the station.
The vegetation along the track was diverse and constantly changing. at the Patonga end we passed through cabbage tree palms (Livistona australis), tree ferns, grass trees (Xanthorhea) and cycads among the magnificent mature gum trees (angophora and scribbly gum mostly). There were abundant banksias, of various kinds, grevilleas, acacias, lambertia, bacon-and-egg, hakeas, shrubby casuarinas, ti-trees and, of course, numerous plants I couldn’t identify. At one point the track was fringed by carnivorous sundews (Drosera), like sea anemones, sparkling with water droplets on their prehensile tendrils.
At our morning tea stop, alongside a little cascade trickling over a broad rocky overhang, we came across some some aboriginal spear-rubbings. The rock platforms along the ridges are fascinating, pocked and scored with meandering erosion lines, patterned with streams of darker stone, sculpted, rounded and smoothed by eons of the passage of water. In shallow depressions, where silt has gathered and moss has grown, stunted casuarinas grow like natural bonsai gardens.
There were numerous birds, including New Holland honeyeaters, fantails, wattle birds and one brown cuckoo dove. We were surrounded by birdcalls, some identifiable, some not, but the bush was so dense we often couldn’t see the birds. Sadly, we also came across a recently deceased big handsome blue-tongue lizard.
gotmebushed 