Saturday 6 August 2016

The red brigade

Sea eagle nest

A break under the nest

Betty and Pat

A 9 bushwalker sized spotted gum

Kay on one of the horizontal swamp mahoganys

Upper reaches of Candlagan Creek

Photos by Karen M and Donna

20 bushwalkers walked to a little-known and seldom-visited nature reserve on Saturday.  Karen M led the group through Broulee village to The Bower private property which gives access to the Illawong Nature Reserve, a 51 hectare block of land and swamp administered by NSW National Parks.  Mark and Sue from The Bower had kindly given us permission to access the Reserve and also to complete our circuit bushwalk through their property and on to Candlagan Creek.

From Illawong, there are extensive views across the adjoining Illawong Swamp and Longvale Swamp.  There’s also a fantastic sea eagle nest perched high in the fork of a huge spotted gum.

We enjoyed walking through mixed forest of spotted gum, ironbark, woollybutt, blackbutt and swamp mahogany with an understorey of burrawang, saw banksia and wattle.

Emerging from Mark & Sue’s property, we then followed the track beside Candlagan Creek back to Broulee, where there are some magnificent swamp mahogany eucalypts growing horizontally from the bank out over the creek.

This was a 7 kilometre flat, easy walk on good tracks through some lovely bushland which finished just before lunch.

Karen M