Leader: Bev Barnett

Lane Cove NP: Epping Station to Eastwood Station via Ahimsa, Whale Rock and Forrester Park

24 April 2019

An 80 leaders walk

Photos Adrienne Kinna

Participants:

Bev Barnett, Chris Edwards, John Miller, Robert Lowman, Robert Robinson, Anthea Michaelis, Susan Tsang, Stephanie Miller, Julia Stevenson, Rogo, Adrienne Kinna, Pam Organ, Kumiko Suzuki, prospective Alkyra Hutchison-Menzer

Walk description:

Epping Station to Eastwood Station: via Ahimsa, Whale Rock, Browns Waterhole, Dence Park and Forrester Park. All on track. Map: STEP Walking Tracks of the Lane Cove Valley.

Report:

It was a sunny April morning when 13 members and 1 prospective met at what has now become the Epping Station melee. Once everyone arrived, we moved away from the throngs to complete the Circle and welcome a mixture of long term members and new faces.

The walk itself commences about a kilometre from the station, so we moved off through the streets towards the M2 Motorway where we picked our way carefully under the overpass. The track is well signposted, being a feeder track to the Great North Walk; it runs beside Devlins Creek...many years ago a sparkling stream with swimming holes, now very much polluted.

As it was an 80th Birthday Walk, we visited Ahimsa, the home of Marie Byles, one of the Club’s founders. It is a tiny fibro cottage surrounded by bush, just off the main track, and now owned by the National Trust. We continued to Whale Rock, an aptly named outcrop with a strategically placed eye, and crossed the creek a couple of times before stopping for morning tea at Browns Waterhole, where we quickly learned to be wary of cyclists riding at speed on the cycle track.

After morning tea, we crossed the cycle track and picked up the Terrys Creek Walk, a change of vegetation and walking track...we had been mostly on a fire trail; here we were on a narrow track with large trees overhead, nice and shady, as the day was warm. Approaching the M2, we spotted the lone specimen of wildlife for the day, a brush turkey, which scurried down the track in front of us, vanishing into the scrub.

Lunch was enjoyed on the lawn outside Epping Creative Centre, adjacent to Dence Park Pool, a brief sojourn into suburbia before descending back on to the Terrys Creek Walk. This section proved to be the nicest part of the walk, and included an attractive small waterfall before we completed the walk in Forrester Park. Here we had a busy photoshoot before taking to the streets for the kilometre walk to Eastwood Station and a cool drink/coffee at a nearby cafe.

Thanks to everyone who came to share the day, a nice walk, good company and an early finish!

If you would like to see a video about the walk and some of the wildlife we didn’t see, search YouTube for... MaD destinations: a wilder side of North West Sydney.