Day 72 - Bush Walking in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, NSW, Australia

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Wednesday 29th January 2014. Bush Walking in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, NSW, Australia

We were woken by the most amazing screeching and chirping coming from outside. This was the sounds of the local wildlife which include cockatoos, cicadas (tree crickets) and kookaburras (tree kingfishers). The latter make such a racket that their call was often used as the background in the Tarzan TV series and movies (even though they are from Oz not Africa!).

D went and prepared breakfast which we ate outside in the sunshine. We were jointed by a 3 foot long goanna. A goanna is an Australian monitor lizard. Goannas combine predatory and scavenging behaviours. A goanna will prey upon any animal it can catch and is small enough to eat whole (lucky we were both too big for it to even consider!).

The YHA is located high on a hill in the middle of the spotted gum forest and bush in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. It is a stone and timber building with wide verandahs. Sarah told us that three quarters of the guests at this place are from Oz, mostly from the Greater Sidney Area. The hostel is a listed building and was built in 1915. it was built as a private house by Charles Hall of Halls Wharf for his family. Later it was purchased by Ebena Isles, a woman noted for conservation and bush walking. She retired to the Blue Mountains, donating her home to the YHA movement in 1967 - very generous of her. It really is lovely.

Today we were going bush walking. So after checking that no beasties had climbed inside them, we donned our hiking boots. We had decided to do the loop walk which included two lookout points. D collected a map, M wrote on the board where we were going and our estimated return time. Then Michael took us to the track start and pointed to a tree that we needed to head for. We climbed steeply uphill along a hardly visible track until we came to the Church Point Lookout. This was on a rocky outcrop ant the top of a cliff looking out across the bay. It was quite a feat leaping across boulders and up and down crevasses until we had a good vantage point. It was worth it though as the view was amazing.

We continued picking our way along the invisible track until we came to a T junction with a much more visible trail. We turned right and found the Morning Bay Lookout Point. On our way we spotted a kangaroo bouncing off in the distance. We took some photos from the lookout and then came back on ourselves and continued down the track, turning off right to look at a small dam. The noise of the cicadas was so incredible we did a video just to capture the sound. Photos are great but they don't
show you the sounds, smells etc. We decided to walk down to the coast rather than complete the loop track. We returned to the hostel and had a pasta lunch which was left over by a couple of Spanish who were here last night - lucky for us as we hadn't catered for lunch at all.

After lunch M had a rest and D went for a walk to the beach and back. M sat and caught up with some blogs until Sarah (Michael's partner) came along and shut the doors - "must keep the snakes out" she said. M nearly had a heart attack.

We both strolled down to Woody Point and Halls Wharf later. At about 6 pm we saw the Yachts racing out in the harbour. Our Warden, Michael was participaiting together with a Brit called Chris who we will hook up with later in our trip (he needed a lift to drive the Ocean Road and we offered). There was a wallaby below the terrace in the early evening. Dinner was the second microwaveable job from the supermarket.

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