Today’s bushwalk was my first UTS Outdoor Adventure Club trip as a Trip leader 🙂
However to be fair, I wouldn’t have done it if one of our experienced club members Marty didn’t join the trip as deputy trip-leader because I don’t have any first aid training and he’s done much longer day bushwalks than I have (25km+ in one day!)
The day began with 6 club members meeting Marty at Central station and as expected there were delays while lost club members were found and then they missed their scheduled train and the next one as well.
Meanwhile I’d driven straight to Heathcote station because I live nearby and caught the train for one stop to Waterfall station where the Royal National Park – Uloola Track Bushwalk begins.
Eventually everyone else turned up and we started at 8:45. The first part of the walk was mostly a wide fire trail which wasn’t very interesting except for a large mushroom which had sprouted on the walking trail.
By 10:45 we reached the extremely dry Uloola Falls and decided to head North North East towards Audley and then loop back to Heathcote station instead of taking the Karloo track straight to Heathcote because we had so much time to spare and wanted to see some proper bush.
This was a wise move because the 2nd part of the walk from Uloola Falls to Audley was much more interesting with a narrower walking track and more varied terrain as we walked along the Gurrumboola ridge where we stopped half way for a leisurely lunch at 12pm.
We then pressed on towards Audley where most people had some R&R on the grass for 20min and watched the kayakers and other day trippers on the other side of the water. The last 500m were walking downhill on a rocky track so avoid it if you have bad knees as there’s no view and there are bound to be people and cars around the area so it wont be quiet either.
The last section of the track involved walking up and over a few ridges and the vegetation changed again with some post-bushfire regrowth where grass trees and other plants had grown really large (taller than my height of 6ft 3″ in several cases) because the fire had created plenty of space for them to grow.
Golden Red coloured Bottlebrushes were regularly spotted along the whole walk.
Overall the walk was approximately 15km and we took from 8:45am (Waterfall Station) – 3:50pm (Heathcote station) including over an hour worth of breaks in total.
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