Catching Up, Part 2: Royal National Park

Last weekend Elyse, Kathleen, and myself decided to get out of Sydney for the day and see some of Australia’s flaura and fauna. Directly south of Sydney lies a beautiful and easily accessible park called the Royal National Park. Some people walk the length of it in two days, overnighting at the midpoint. We decided just to go for the day so we took a train to a station across the road from the park and headed onto the trail.

The park was absolutely gorgeous! As we walked through a dense Eucalypt forest we had intermittent views of the sea cliffs on the Tasmanian Sea. As always in Australia, there was a huge variety of singing and colorful birds seemingly everywhere. After about 3 hours of walking we finally made it to the clearing above the beach. We had hoped to see kangaroos here but midday proved too hot for them. Kangaroos don’t have many sweat glands so during the day they rest in cooler spots. The best time to spot them are at dusk and dawn (just like deer in the US).

Our trail ended at a squeaky clean beach. And I mean squeaky in the literal sense: when you walk on the sand it squeaks! The beach has a few remnant huts leftover from the ‘depression,’ according to the signs along the path. I’m not sure what this means so I’ll have to research it further. We relaxed and enjoyed the beach and the sun before further exploring along the coast.

As the tide went down it revealed a large flat rocky area known as the figure-eight pools. In the stone there are a number of perfectly round holes and two that are connected resembling a figure eight. Inside are the usual assortment of tide pool critters like small fish, crabs, seaweed, snails, etc. We were even lucky enough to come across a large rockfish that had somehow been stranded in a very shallow pool! Kat decided to save it but I warned her that the fins likely had venomous spines. So Kat borrowed Elyse’s swimsuit from her bag and managed to wrap the fish up and then dump it into the sea without being stung!

The route back took us on a lower path that went through palm and fern tree groves known as the Burning Palms. We spotted a lyrebird although we thought it was a feral female peacock at the time. But the great sight of the day was a Red-Bellied Black Snake that was around 1.5 m long! We didn’t know what kind of snake it was right then so we all kept a respectable distance. I think giving all creatures in Australia a respectable distance is wise until we’re more familiar with the dangerous ones! I later read that the Red-Bellied’s venom is on the scale somewhere above a rattlesnake but just below a King Cobra. Yikes!

Luckily on the way back we just caught the beginning of what turned out to be a dramatic thunder and lightening storm. It was raining so hard that walking the 200 m from the train station to the bus stop got all of us absolutely soaked!