A new forest walk in the Royal National Park

Forest Track

Sydney Nimble has added a new bush walk to its Royal National Park Tour.

Unlike some of our coastal walks through heathland (Wedding Cake Rock and Eagle Rock), the Forest Track offers a chance to see a very different environment in the national park.

Part of the walk is through a forest whilst the second half moves into a rainforest.

The track is a loop track so you finish within 50 metres of where you started. The track takes the rough shape of a loop as it follows and stays inside of Bola Creek and the Hacking River.

The range of vegetation is diverse and interesting.

There is a small patch of large Gymea Lilies where the sword like leaves are exceptionally high. Can’t wait for these plants to bloom with long shoots and wonderful red flowers on the end.

There are many cabbage tree palms of varying sizes, some as high as 25 metres, maybe more. Sorry didn’t bring the tape measure!

One of the real treats is coming across tall red cedar trees.

These trees were saved from loggers in the 1920s after community protest. In view of the high value of the timber from red cedar trees the trees were known as red gold. There’s gold in them there hills!

Attached to some trees are epithytes, which are plants that do not put down roots on the ground but instead have roots located on another plant or tree.

This allows the epithyte to exist closer to the forest’s canopy and obtain access to better quality light.

Unlike a parasite an epithyte does not take nutrients from the tree. It will instead rely on airborne nutrients, rain for water and compost on tree branches to survive.

Two attractive epithytes that can be seen on the Forest Track are the bird nest and staghorn ferns (first two pictures below).

There is fungi (check out third photo), lichen and much plant life to see when you walk through the rainforest: bright green moss on logs and boulders, epithytes, hollow trees, ferns, palms, eucalypts, casuarinas, red cedar trees and lianas.

Lianas are long stemmed woody vines that use trees and other means to make there way upwards to the rainforest canopy in search of sunlight.

if you are lucky you may come across a lyre bird whilst walking on the forest path.

Lyre birds are a native Australian bird which have the incredible capacity to mimic other birds and animals. They have also been known to imitate human sounds and sounds made by machines.

The Forest Track takes around an hour and half to walk and Sydney Nimble is delighted to include it in our Sydney Tours.