A Short Australien Bush Walk to Clear the Mind

One thing to remember about Australia, their concept of distance is somewhat similar to the USA. A short walk may not be what‘s expected.

Our friend Marilyn suggested that we head out to Bouddi National Park for a bush and beach walk. Where she lives in Gosford, north of Sydney, it’s a a short drive to get to “the bush”, or the beach. We got to the car park, and set off, water, hats, and temps in the mid 20’s C. A bit hazy, but a lovely morning. The first 1/3 of the trail was flat and wandered through bush that had burned sometime in the past couple of years. They have some pretty extreme bush fires here in the summer. There were lots of Gum trees and plants called Black Boys that survive and revive after fires.

Lots of bird song, along the way and we saw this beautiful butterfly, something different from what we see in Canada. The markings were quite spectacular.

We got to the second third of the walk, a bit more up and down, but mostly down. Along the way, Cathy spotted a Wallaby munching on some eucalyptus. It wasn’t far away, and completely unfazed by this bunch of gawking humans.

We worked our way down and towards the coast, through the bush with occasional glimpses of the ocean. We came out to a viewpoint and stopped to sit and take in the ocean. This is the east coast of Australia, so looking out is pure ocean. The wind was light, around 15 kph, so a lovely cooling breeze, for Cathy and I. By this time the temps were up to the high 20’s, low 30’s, hot for Cathy and I, and according to Marilyn, a bit cool for this time of year. Perspective is everything.

The last part of the walk to the beach was down a lot of steps, a preview of what was to come.

The crescent shaped beach was stunning, golden sands, and gentle rolling surf. As we wandered along Cathy, true to form, managed to find a couple of pieces of sea glass. We collect sea glass at home along our rocky beach, but didn’t expect to find any here.

By the time we got to the end of the beach, we were hot, and then we started the last 1/3 of the walk. It was signposted to be about 1.6 km. In the back of my mind was the drive UP to the car park and all the steps DOWN to the beach. Lots of steps up, lots of breaks, but we made it to the car! It was a stunning walk through the bush, although a bit more than we probably should have done after 36 hours of travel, and not much sleep.

We headed down and out of the park looking for a nice cafe on the water to have a bit of lunch, and ended up at a cafe run by the Copacabana Surf Live Saving Club. Nice lunch, great coffee, and time to sit and stare at the ocean watching yachts sail by. Turned out there was a yacht race from Sydney to Bird Island And the yachts were coming in towards the beach then tacking out.

After lunch, we took a nice drive around the coast along winding roads, stopping to take is a few sights and an up close with a few pelicans. The pelicans here are apparently the second largest species in the world. The birds are totally acclimatized to humans, mostly because they are regularly fed in the area.

What’s next for us is a bit of planning for a 10 day road trip south of Sydney, then inland to the Blue Mountains, back to the coast and Gosford.