Royal National Park

We really and truly caught the outdoor bug with our visit to the Blue Mountains (loads of outdoor bugs caught Chris too, them seem quite fond of her) Sydney's packed full of National Parks, there's 23 nearby and we've only been to a few. We had to put this right. We checked out our still very useful Sydney Guide books and learned a bit more about the Royal National Park just south of the city.

Hacking River, much more tranquil than its name suggests

There's some incredible looking beaches on the coast there but from the map they were a bit out of our reach as we have to depend on public transport. The trains drop off at the western side of the park, the beaches are 35kms away. There is a hike from south of the park, where the train stops, along the coast to Bundeena in the north which sounds amazing but that takes 2 days. We're still at the novice stage with outdoor adventuring but since watching Into the Wild especially we wanna get out there and try it.

Crazy tree, could lightning have split it in 2?!

We had to walk 3kms from Loftus train station to the visitors centre at Audley to get a map of the park and some advice on where to go. The guide lady was discouraged by our lack of a vehicle. We were kind of disheartened, the park had loads of interesting stuff to see like waterfalls, swimming holes and odd shaped rocks but on foot we were advised that it would take us 10 hours of hard walking to get there and back to the train.

The trail goes cold

We poured over the map and decided that as it was our first time here we shouldn't do anything too wild, like go against the park rangers instructions, and settled on a seemingly short walk through the park to the train station south of where we got off.

Can we just call for a helicopter?

It was roasting that day, at least 27 degrees but we'd come prepared with water and food. We definitely could have done with more water though. The trail we took back seemed straightforward on the map but we ended up getting lost at one point due to some deceptive signposts. We had to double back after 45 minutes of uphill walking across some uneven ground because the trail on the map ended where it shouldn't have.

Lovely Kanagaroo Creek. If we weren't exhausted we might've spent more time here

It was hard work, especially in the heat and we heard a news story from a couple of weeks back in our minds about a couple getting stranded in the national park overnight. That would not have been any fun. We didn't see any wildlife which was a little unexpected but it's probably a whole different story at night! As we were doubling back we passed an Asian couple on their way to the waterfalls seemingly woefully unprepared for the 10km, fairly difficult walk. We wished them good luck, hope they got out alright.

Nice veiws, Kangaroo Creek from a height

Once we got back on the correct trail the walking was still pretty tough. We crossed a river and stopped for a paddle, if we hadn't taken so long to get there it would've been fun to stop for a dip but the place was monopolised by a group of people with canoes. The 5km walk took us about 4 hours not because we're useless. No! Most of it was uphill. We were very relieved to be back to civilisation when we emerged at Heathcote, near the train. Hard work but well worth it. We're planning to go back.

See the hike on a Google Map

View the hike and the park in Google Earth

Royal National Park Gallery