Bartleys Creek to Beaches

27 April 2017

Photos by Mary T

The Murramarang National Park, surrounding South Durras, offers bushwalkers a great variety of tracks and terrain. There are the well formed tracks maintained by the National Park Service, as well as many overgrown single tracks and old logging roads where moss covered bridge timbers rot amongst the rainforest. This was the area that 16 members, who set off from the Murramarang Boat Ramp, headed out to explore.

The 15km walk offered all of the above with a couple of good hills thrown in to test the calf muscles. Autumn is a special time in these forests for the variety of fungi on display, including the brightly coloured “coral fungi”. The fruiting bodies of these fungi could be regarded as the equivalent of the flowers within the higher order of plants.

The group headed down to the north end of Dark Beach for lunch. Here the weather warning about “high seas” was demonstrated clearly as rough waves pounded the beach. Later, as we walked north around the rock platform towards Wasp Head, these high seas showed what they could do even at low tide by blocking our path north. So with a bit of doubling back we chose an alternate route which took us down onto Mill Beach and the finish of our walk.

Mary M