Exploring King's Tableland

On a nice clear Easter afternoon, we headed out to Wentworth Falls for a short bushwalk with the boys. Unfortunately, so did everyone else -- so we went to a less well-known spot not far from there.

King's Tableland was named by Governor Macquarie for its sublime views.


It's fascinating for some other reasons. The top of the tableland is a tesselated sandstone pavement. Smooth pavements are far more common.


Where some areas have worn away, little pools form (with tadpoles!). These pools were used by Aboriginal people long ago for sharpening axe heads: they would dip them into the water, then sharpen them on the stone by the pool. Here are the results:


These are supposed to be 150 grooves or other signs of Indigenous use of the area, but we didn't see that many. We spotted this wounded Praying Mantis instead, out in the open, perhaps dropped by a bird.


Below the tableland is an overhang with rock carvings. Carbon dating has established Aboriginal use of the area to 22,000 years ago. The carvings that we found were small and very faint indeed, just a few pairs of kangaroo footprints. There are many more, but the area was in deep shade. A morning trip might have allowed us to see more.

Down the slope was this lovely young Sydney Red Gum, which had just shed its bark, as they do in Autumn. Rain has turned the shed bark a glorious deep orange. The Twig was fascinated by the little pool inside the trunk.


Nearby, these spectacular mushrooms:


And yet more orange tones in this Banksia spinulosa var. collina. I sound very knowledgeable, don't I? Banksia spinulosa holds its flowers above the foliage, making it quite a distinctive species. It is a probable parent of the 'Giant Candles' cultivar, which does the same thing. There are two variants: B. spinulosa var.spinulosa has black styles, for which reason it is sometimes called Hairpin Banksia. B. spinulosa var. collina has orange styles.


I am sure a botanist will turn up and tell me I have this all wrong now. In the meantime, let us look again at the view:

Cowan Creek Bushwalk

Last Saturday our family went on a bushwalk from Berowra to Mount Kuring-Gai Stations via Cowan Creek. Cowan Creek is a tributary of the Hawkesbury River. It was a perfect winter's day with pale blue skies.

The path down from Berowra to Waratah Gully is rather uneven and we were puzzled by the amount of fallen timber. The trees weren't big, but it seemed like a lot of them had been knocked over. Something to do with burning off? The undergrowth was at most hip height, and at the start mainly a kind of grevillea (I think; a lot of our healthland plants are hard to tell apart) and a sweet-scented plant with small five-petalled white flowers (Woollsia pungens, the Snow Wreath). The only flower I saw that I knew was Epacris longiflora, the Native Fuchsia.

As we came closer to the gully floor we could hear water running over rocks. Such a lovely sound! We crossed the creek where once there had been a bridge, and continued alongside the creek into a patch of rainforest. Some of the trees here had the distinctive bark of coachwoods (Ceropetalum apetalum, which have smooth bark blotched white, grey and chestnut. Again, all the trees seemed very young, with diameters under 10cm. I suspect that this gully might have been entirely burnt out by the 1994 bushfires; most of Kuring-Gai Chase National Park was damaged.


We had out lunch on Waratah Bay, not far from the abandoned barge. The sun was welcome after the cool of the rainforest.


Afterwards, our walk continued southwards, up Cowan Creek (which looks more like a river to me, being a couple of hundred metres wide). This was the view north, towards the Hawkesbury. The vegetation is the dry sclerophyll forest typical of the Sydney region.


This was the view upstream:


It was lovely to walk along the creek. Most of the track was about 10m above the waterline. We stopped at every inlet to fortify ourselves with chocolate, and eventually we reached the uphill track to Kuring-gai Station. It was a stiff climb for the children (and, truth be told, for the unfit parents), but there were good views from a resting point halfway up. We ate more chocolate, and I annoyed the family by exclaiming over various flowers.

It was on the latter part of the bushwalk that I noticed NSW Christmas Bush growing everywhere. Unfortunately we also saw an unknown weed plant everywhere. No idea what it was, and my photos didn't come out, but it was doing very well indeed, growing on long canes to 2m with pointed leaves, and very hairy. On the other hand, there was a cream wattle (probably Acacia ulicifolia) flowering in great swathes near Mount Kuring-gai, scenting the air.

This pairing of weathered sandstone and gum trees is typical of coastal Sydney:


The walk was about 9km and a bit strenuous, but our five-year-old and nine-year-old did manage without whingeing until we were almost finished. The hill at the end is not difficult, merely long, and paths are generally in good repair. It is a popular walk and is impossible to get lost on, there being only one track for most of the route. The water views and variety of vegetation make it very enjoyable. A good family day-walk, with easy access by public transport. I'd suggest going in another month. It was really too early for most of our spring wildflowers, but the Boronia was out. The mauve-pink really stands out against our grey-green bush!


Note: While I've marked the photo as B. mollis, I now think it might well have been B. ledifolia -- the leaves were long rather than round.

Easter Weekend Scenery

As usual, we went to Katoomba Easter Convention, up in the Blue Mountains, for the long weekend. I think it's astonishing that we have such wonderful scenery so close to home (it's about 100 km from our place). The Geek took these photos at Govett's Leap. 'Leap' is the Scottish word for waterfall -- the story that Govett leapt to his death here is a myth. He was the surveyor, and an artist.

View down the Grose Valley to Mount Hay, about 9km away

We couldn't do much in the way of bushwalking over the weekend as the Sprig had croup, but we did manage the 1.5 km return trip from Govett's Leap Lookout to Bridal Veil Falls. You get to cross the creek at the top of the falls.

Now I know where the idea for wet-edge pools came from.

Wind gives the bridal veil effect to the falls while the water drops about 165m (537"). You can hear rapids under the tree canopy as it tumbles to join the Grose River lower down; the gorge is about 600m deep.


The walk to the falls is pleasant, but includes lots of steps down... which of course means you need to walk up them afterwards. The kids found the return trip hard going and my legs were very stiff the next day! I hate to think how hard it would be to climb up from the floor of the valley, but the bushwalks to the Blue Gum Forest in the valley are quite popular. One day walk (Perry's Lookdown to Evans Lookout) requires five hours to cover 10km (6mi). I don't know how much of that walk is straight up -- or down!