Date: 24/8/2024
Trip leader: Terry
Party: Lorys, Luoyujia, Pingkan, Rachel, Robert, Siyi, Tianyang, Vanessa, Wentao, Wentao, Xilei, Yiting, Yongjie, Yoon Hee, Zelu
A hotter-than-usual day in Ku-Ring-Gai National Park sees a beginner trip heading down Great North Walk down to Jerusalem Bay and up to Taffy’s Rock. We didn’t reach the rock itself but have been fairly close to where it is on the trail. The day started at Cowan where ~10 people came, many beginners while some have been on my other trips. Jin was late for the train and joined us further down the track.
Crossing the Pacific Mwy bridge and admiring the deep cuttings of sandstone we proceeded onto a downhill section to Jerusalem Bay. The track is well-formed with some muddy and tricky sections mostly due to recent rainfall. The forecast was to be slightly rainy but as with most forecasts such tiny amounts of rain tend to be negligible. There are a lot of scenic gum trees which I took many pictures of. The variety of plants along this bit of Gt North Walk and the section near Berowra are both really impressive given their proximity to urban Sydney. Ferns, and flowers all populate along the track perhaps in favour of the wetter conditions along the coast.
In Jerusalem bay we scrambled down to the coast for a view of this fairly sheltered bay. Here we’re met with a few walks continuing all the way to Brooklyn, similar to the trip Brian did a week after. We spotted an animal crawling out of a shell on the shoreline. Barnacles? not quite. Perhaps a snail? can’t tell. My high school ecology knowledge only went as far as rocky shores, mangroves and wetlands, common features in Hong Kong.
A slight shortcut across a gully we started a short uphill stretch towards Taffy’s Rock. The scrambles and hillclimb were a bit of a challenge for beginners but they were valuable experience for them moving onto harder walks. Jin caught up with the rest of the group at this time as we were progressing slower than usual. On the walk, we chatted about how the new international students cap is threatening job security of uni staff, and as usual I shared my insights about my patients in my rural placement in Queensland.
Up on a ridge towards Taffy’s Rock we decided to sit down and have lunch. I normally don’t bring lunch on beginner walks and was jamming on Jin’s crackers. At least it’s got a proper cream filling, not like those Asian family assorted biscuits where every variety tastes horrendous. I was reminded to write trip reports, but was wondering what could be included in one for a beginner trip like this. With a bit of mobile reception, I scrolled through my email looking for inspiration while sharing some trip report insights with those who apparently never read them. Probably something about telling international students to swim between flags? Or things happening in my life like the book I was reading last night? Uni is very boring with lecturers covering Year 9 geography content in a 3000-level course, and time was well spent in lecture reading about agriculture in Hong Kong, cat genetics, biodiversity and other random things as the lecturer rambled around her lengthy slides. That should be enough content for a trip report, as I continued my tradition of playing memes in a bushwalk around friends. I pulled out my Instagram, found a video of a nursing mannikin speaking to the nurse with odd textbook answers, and we all had a laugh at a tight corner of the bush.
Half of the group decided to wait as it’s an out-and-back track to Taffy’s Rock. Down the track, there are a few trigonometric stations where Jin recalled a trip he did two years ago at the exact spot. We scrambled up one around a fairly fragile structure and decided not to muck around with the rest. Some pagoda-like rock formations scatter along the trail giving perfect flat surfaces to sit on. The track does get tight yet remains well-formed. We did a short bushbash to go around an obstacle but otherwise the beginners were all fine with the elements on the track. It was more like the heat that became an issue, with near-summer conditions in August which we didn’t expect.
A golden beetle rested on my trousers and Jin thought it’d be cool to take it home and observe under a microscope. He mentions how his powerful image reconstruction algorithm is able to generate surface slices of the insect, which is impressive since normally anatomy this thick would likely require ionising radiation. I’ve seen people performing CT scans on mandarins and modern image reconstruction algorithms are powerful enough to construct 3D models of even individual segments of the fruit.
At this point seeing Taffy’s Rock on the other side of the ridge we thought it might be a good place to turn back. Continuing through would leave the rest of the group waiting for even longer and probably not worthwhile given the relatively beginner experience level we’ve got.
Scrolling through Instagram these days saw a mate on SUBW sharing his solo adventures across Mallee in Northwestern Victoria. In the trip I was also sharing about how the historic destruction of vegetation in the Mallee region in favour of farmlands has caused increased droughts and shifting sand dunes, something I found in a book discussing Murry-Darling basin’s environmental issues. Last year, my trip to that region discovered how barren and almost abandoned the towns were, with endless crop fields hiding behind a few trees. In Instagram pictures of dwarf eucalyptus in the national park are what the region should look like, as Jin beside me jokingly said Australia should learn from China and plant trees in its desert.
Shortly we headed back the way we came to Cowan station. The way back was done slow and steady, with regular breaks in between. The group all made it back for the 5pm train back to Sydney, where me and a few got off at Strathfield for Korean food while others likely headed back to the city for Sichuan food.
