Round Willoughby Walk – 24 July 2017

The Willoughby Council have created a “Round Willoughby Walk” that combines bushwalking tracks and roads and provides a large loop walk around the municipality. Details of the walk are available here on their website. It is possible to do the walk in one long day (of over 30 kms) or you can do any of the many stages as a shorter walk.

On previous walks and fungi trips, I had already visited most of the western sections of the walk – along Blue Gum Creek, The Lane Cove River and Ferndale Park. But I had not visited the eastern sections, so that is what I intended to do. During the day I completed the first 5 (of 8) stages.

Flat Rock Creek

I set out from St Leonards Station (bit late – it was about 10:30 am) and made my way to Flat Rock Creek at Northbridge. I soon entered a nice section of bushland. Lower down the creek was an attractive waterfall – one I will have to return to photograph in higher water.

The next section of the walk goes from Long Bay, around Fig Tree Point to Sailors Bay. The  map indicated that the first part of this would be through a golf course, but this was not so – the route followed a track on a lower level, through attractive bush. When the track goes around Salt Pan Creek you can see the wrecks of several boats.

I stopped at Clive Park for good views of Middle Harbour. Then a bit of road walking to The Palisade at Castlecrag.

Section 3 is around the suburb of Castlecrag. The streets of Castlecrag all seem to have rather whimsical names – e.g. the Palisade, the Outpost, The Bulwark, the Citadel etc. The best part of this section is the start, where the track goes through a nice remnant of rainforest at Sailors Bay Creek. As well as some nice orchids there is also a rather nice waterfall lower down the creek. Again, its one I will need to return to after rain.

Then the walk winds along narrow roads in this pokey suburb. At one place, I ventured a short way down a track at the end of Rockley St to see if I could get a view of the bay from Mowbray Point. But – too many trees for  good view. The section ends with more street walking around Sugarloaf Creek.

The next two sections of the walk leave the roads and follow tracks through nice bushland. Section 4 descends down to Camp Creek and then you follow the Harold Reid Foreshore Track around Crag Cove and Castle Cove. Then this almost joins up with the North Arm Track of section 5.

The North Arm Track is perhaps the longest of the bush tracks so far. It descends to the mangroves of Scotts Creek and then crosses the creek on a wooden bridge. It then goes around the north side of Castle Cove to Sugarloaf Bay and H C Press Park.

Section 5 finishes with some road walking, but along here you can get great views of Middle Harbour right up to Roseville Bridge. From here, there is  link section, all on roads that takes you to section 6 which starts on the west side of Chatswood, but time was passing and it would soon be getting dark. So I then consulted my phone and saw that there would soon be a bus that would take me to Chatswood Station.

More photos of this walk are online here on my website.