Perry's Blog

Crosslands has been settled for a very long time (as a lot of Australian areas that could be accessed by river): Some interesting information about the early history of the area.

Sandi wrote:

It is Monday morning: gorgeous day, very cold overnight despite track-pants, singlet and jumper. I think I need to fluff up the sleeping bag. Still waking with a chunky green nose, so thankful it is nothing more.

Slept pretty well, woke about 6am finally to the noises of a swamp hen rustling through the stuff on the table. Everything is damp. Have still hot embers in the fire, so very easily fired up this morning.

Another wonderful morning full of many cups of tea: what luxury it is to have as much clean, cool water out of a tap; we were a little concerned about what was coming up. The map was showing a number of stiff climbs on our way to Berowra Waters, and then a very stiff climb out of Berowra Waters up to our camping spot for the night. Still, this was going to be day three, when our fitness levels would catch up with us!?!

We'd brought Jesse and Briony's little gas cooker, and were very thankful of it where there were no cooking places. The weather certainly is hot, which is not a great combination with fire.

9:08am Leave Camp Site

The walk east out of Crosslands is very well known to us, we've done it quite a few times and when I was doing my Associate Diploma in Horticulture I did my transect here. The water is brackish and the air smells salty.

A boardwalk takes you over some swampy ground to a viewing platform, and then discharges onto the track which runs along beside the creek. A viewing platform has a nice view of the Berowra Creek: it really is peaceful here this time of the morning... wouldn't it be lovely to spend a couple of days here?

Calna Creek is crossed on a foot bridge. Here we passed a young couple struggling up the steps, dragging a shopping trolley behind them with their camping gear. They'd spent the night at the camping spot just over Calna Creek. The young lass wanted to inquire about what type of animal would have terrorized them in their tent the night before with loud and hair-razing screams and grunts. I said I'd suspect a (small) possum was the culprit, and pretty harmless. She didn't seem convinced, but the fellow was saying "I told you so!"

After crossing the creek we didn't inspect the camping area just down Benowie Walking Track (we were a little more focused on the day ahead to worry about what we were going to miss). There are more board walks over swampy ground then the track winds along the river eventually climbing over a wee headland and running down to Sam's Creek. It is very easy walking. Sam's Creek was named after a fellow who used to live in a hut at the mouth of the creek. He used to support himself with the fish he caught in the river.

Sam's Creek is crossed up the creek a wee way, over some large rocks. The track is not immediately obvious leading away from the creek, but following the slightly warn rocks brought us to the base of the steps. The walk up to this point had been very easy, but now we needed to head up some stairs, over 100 metres!

Something that we'll learn over and over again on this walk is that you pay for the views, generally with every painful step up a steep climb. This climb wasn't as bad as we thought it may have been, maybe our fitness was starting to kick in??

Just along from the junction with the Benowie Walking Track is the Naa Badu Lookout which overlooks Berowra Creek back to Crosslands Reserve from where we'd just come.

The track is an easy grade up here and nicely shaded. There's not too far to walk before we get to our Morning Tea spot at Camp Site 2.6.

10:55am Camp Site 2.6
Camp Site 2.6 was a gorgeous meadow of wildflowers. Lesser Flannel Flowers and Dampiera. The morning so far had not been as heavy as we thought it may have been, but it's nice to sit against a tree and have a snack. Our shirts were quite damp, but deliciously cool in the breeze and the shade. This spot deserved a longer stay, but the day ahead was calling and we were compelled to move on.

The walk across to Berowra Waters is along the contours so pretty easy and we make good time. It's mostly along a ridge where the vegetation is stunted and the soil sandy.

The first views of Berowra Waters are invigorating with a definite cool breeze off the water. It's another warm day.

It's amazing how much noise drifts up from the settlement, mostly from the car-ferry I guess.

Fell off the track and onto Berowra Waters Road and walked along to the ferry. Our information gathering drive the week before had revealed that everything was on the other side of the river, including our luncheon destination!

12:15pm Berowra Waters Fish & Chip Cafe
Perry wrote:

Happened to arrive when two bus tours from retirement villages (as it looks by the average age) were luncheoning. Reminded me of when we cut our hair after getting married!

I'm really surprised how well we did this morning, the climb out of Sam's Creek was pretty rough (and marked as hard), and the climb down into Berowra Waters was just the same, but I think we did it quite quickly.

The breeze off Berowra Creek was just lovely, it's certainly pretty warm today - flowers continue to be awesome: Grey Spider Flower Grevillea, Pimelia particularly nice.

Both of us are looking forward to eating something fresh... "two days of magotty bread..." We're trying to figure out a way to purchase a small amount of milk for my tea.

Just realized that we've walked off the map!

Walking off a map was a significant event that we enjoyed celebrating with a "Hooray!!"

We'd decided to spend as much time under cover during the hottest part of the day, and thankfully the Cafe were happy with us sitting there.

Lunch was particularly nice with lots of cold drinks and fresh food. There was not a lot of choice when it came to groceries, and no gas for the gas cooker.

Sandi wrote:

How lovely lunch was, fresh food, ah!! and they gave us 2 pieces grilled fish that were a wrong or over order; so lovely and what a meal. It will be hard to get going again this afternoon, feel a wee sleep coming on!

Have a hard climb out of here, so lovely to get a good break now. Have reserved bacon and eggs at the bait/bottle shop, and will fill drink bottles here. Sure hope we can keep this up!

3:15pm Leave Restaurant
The young waitress at the Cafe filled our water bottles for us and wished us well, saying that the track was sometimes hard to find up on top.

The bitumen road was hot as we walked back to the ferry, then along to the start of the track, which we didn't think was particularly well marked. The track along the creek was easy walking, but we knew there was some stiff climbing to come.

The climb up out of Berowra Waters was tougher than what we'd thought it would be, and it certainly was hotter than we'd expected. Sandi counted 386 steps up (but didn't count steps along the path)! Some of it was pretty vertical and seemed closer to rock climbing than bushwalking. The packs certainly feel heavy after the re-provisioning.

Thankfully we found some puddles along the way that we put to good use: not something we'd be able to do in the middle of a hot, dry summer.

Once we'd go on top of the ridge we were expecting to find the campsite sooner than we did: we were pretty done in by this stage. My map reading was getting pretty good by now so I was confident where the campsite was according to the map, just not overly confident that the map had the campsite recorded accurately. There were a number of side trails that Sandi in her desperation to find camp insisted on pursuing whilst I continued down the main track. I was sure that it can not have been very much further on.

And thankfully, not 100 metres on I found the campsite. I "ran" back shouting to Sandi that "Eureka, we had found it!" and the way we were feeling it was worth more than gold.

4:50pm Camp Site 2.7
This Camp Site it on the top of a ridge, with a good deal of open space and adequate low tree cover and plenty of space for numerous tents. We only needed one at the moment, though.

I popped up the tent as Sandi got something to eat and drink ready.

Perry wrote:

I'm sitting against a tree in a balmy Sydney evening having watched an awesome sunset over a spectacular view and eaten an egg and bacon sandwich with lots of hunger sauce. I've got to say that we paid dearly for this wonderful place: each step up that incline was pretty grueling - it will be interesting to see how slow we did it - but our packs were up to full weight again: over 20 and over 10kgs!!

We're both pretty exhausted - tomorrow will be hard as well. The GPS says we've climbed 200 metres, but I think we climbed 100 of those twice!! Tomorrow has similar terrain - it will be interesting to see if doing it in the morning makes much difference.

Sitting on the edge of the escarpment and watching the sun go down, feeling so exhausted, was very special. Wondered what the blue lumps and bumps on the horizon were?

I think the day was a lot warmer than expected (not that we've caught the news lately), can't stop drinking, but have had to so that there's enough for breakfast and the walk to Cowan.

Well, Sandi is in bed already, it's very dark, so we'll call this day closed and dream about tomorrow!

Just for interest sake - We did the 2.5 kms from the bottom of the stairs to the the camp site in just under 2 hours: 1.6 km/hour!

One thing we should of done sooner was to apply aeroguard liberally to all exposed skin: the sand flies are very thick and have bitten us on ankles and feet, arms and hands. They've already started to turn purple and we're applying sting-goes.

End of Day Three where we ended up 28.7 kms into our walk, which we'd walked in 13 hrs @ 2.1 km/hr (including breaks).

Tomorrow is a difficult day with a couple of hard climbs, the one out of Jerusalem Bay is meant to be renowned as hard, and we'll end up at Brooklyn Dam.