I have been to Mill Creek a fair bit recently on trip with the Sydney Fungal Studies Group to look at the interesting fungi that can be found there. But its also a great place to start bushwalks. Two walks are popular – the first – a short walk up the creek from the picnic area and then back along a track that features a lot of Grass Trees. The other is a lower walk that is sometimes referred to as the Eleven km Walk or the Mill Creek Loop.
On this day, I was out with Bob, and we did the Mill Creek Loop, and on it did a short side trip to see an interesting Aboriginal Art site.
Grey Shrike-thrush
Mill Creek is in Dharug National Park and can be reached by following the road to Spencer for a short way from the north side of Hawkesbury River at Wisemans Ferry. Near where the road crosses Mill Creek, there is a turn off with a NPW sign. This side road takes you to the Mill Creek Campground and the Picnic Area where the walks start and end. These are actually in a side creek of Mill Creek.
We started off along the track up the creek. It starts with some nice forest and then it follows the steep side of the creek for a few kilometres. Part way along we turned off and walked up to a large rock platform. This is a major Aboriginal Art site -and features many rock engravings, wells and sharpening grooves. The engravings are particularly interesting. There are many of human figures and shields, and also quite a few of animals – Emus, Kangaroos and at least one Sting Ray.
In one place a set of Emu footprints have been carved into the rock. Many of these engravings are very faint and we needed to look very carefully to see and interpret them.
Once back at the main track, we continued around the loop. We stopped for lunch at one place and further along crossed a number of small creeks. One of these had a lot of sharpening grooves in the streambed.
All the way around the loop were beautiful wild flowers, and a lot of birds – particularly in the section up the first creek.
The loop finished with a descent back down to the Picnic Area.
This was a very pleasant and interesting day out.