Ku-ring-gai National Park

December 20

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First day of our 3 weeks summer holidays! Time to discover some more Australian nature!

After a weekend of swimming and floating in the sea, getting wet in a storm, and full of sand by the wind, mum/myself decided today is the day for our first bush walk!

Thanks to this great book we discover a National Park which is reachable by public transport. We can get there by 2 different busses and a bit of walking. Piece of cake, only 1h of travelling. It is the Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Garden.

Leaving home with 5 persons, takes always more time than expected and yes... just too late, we see our first bus leaving in front of us.... No panic. Alternate plan B comes into play and we walk all the way to the train station in St Leonards (1km?) where a train will bring us to Gordon. There we will catch our second bus as per plan A. Woohoo! Well done :-)

In Gordon we jump on this bus decorated by the local school :-) fun!

Unfortunately the bus got the right number, but the wrong direction. After 5 minutes we are able to get out of the christmas bus, discover how hard it can be to cross a typical Australian suburbs 4 lanes road. At the other side we take a bus back to Gordon station.

Then we wait for the right bus, right direction this time. And hop we go, driving northwards to Monica Vale. I am eager to get at the entrance of the park, following the stops very attentively, waiting for the previous last bus stop, in order to push the "Stop" button to get off at the next one and.... NO....!

Seems the bus driver was not so attentive, he passes our stop... Bwoooohooo .... no luck today. We are too far! And the road is too big and dangerous to walk back. So there we go, another 5 minutes t

o find a gap between the cars and pass the busy 4 lanes road and get at the other side of the road to wait for the same bus, yet the other direction, to bring us one stop back.

Finally, we got there in 2 hours, after a missed bus, a train, and another 4 busses. I am grateful that all my little adventurers are still in a good mood! Fortunately they love taking trains and busses.

Now is time for our bush walk. This wildflower park has a lot of small trails, and we choose the biggest one, 4km, which is following a creek and will bring us to a little waterfall.

We descend between the rocks toward the creek in the valey and find some black tree trunks, traces of the bush fires of 2 years ago. Nature has well restored and today green is abundant and everywhere. This big flower is Banksia.

This little adventurer walks while looking through her binoculars (backward ) without falling

(too much)

The Mueller track follows the small creek and we pick-nick at the (tiny) waterfall, a lovely and cool place.

These scribbly marks are made by a tiny caterpillar as it eats the bark of this gum tree.

Maybe it is a secret message?

It says Yum I can`t stop eating :-) And I simply can`t stop admiring this art work ... so beautiful!!

After an exhausting and hot walk, we were happy to fill our water bottles with cool water. And the way back home was smooth, with only 1 bus, 1 train, 1 bus., and an ice cream :-)