We decided to do a hike today as part of our training for Nepal and was initially thinking of doing the Coastal walk from Bundeena to Otford. However, we thought we should do something different and took out a Sydney hiking book which I got for Christmas a few years ago. There we found a hike that started from Waterfall and finished at Heathcote and is 12km long.
We decided to do it the other way round and started from Heathcote and learned that reading hiking navigational instructions backwards can be a little confusing. Finding the start of the track was our first challenge. The trail was called the “Friendly trail”, however that name is very misleading as the trail was not friendly at all – It was quite hard to find. Well actually it was behind the Scout camp, so you had to walk through the Scout camp to get to the start of the track.
End of Friendly track which joins onto Pipeline track.
When friendly track ended, there was a metal walkway over a water pipe which took us to pipeline track. It’s called pipeline track because there’s a massive water pipe running along side the track. Around there, we ran into a friendly local and chatted with him about the hike we’re currently doing. He said it’s a really nice hike and suggested we take the first left turn after the causeway as we get to enjoy the views of the creek. The other option was to not take that first left turn and continue to Lake Eckersley, which is nice as well, but he recommended the first left turn as the view is better.
That’s where we made our mistake and took a left turn too early. The end result of that was that we hiked along the ridge line, missed the lake completely and towards the end was just hiking parallel and not too far off from the princes highway. The total distance covered was only 9km. It was a fairly easy 9km too as the terrain was relatively flat with not too much elevation change.
You can see from the maps below where we took the turn too early and where we had some troubles finding the start of the track. Otherwise it was a good hike and we’re looking at returning there again to do the proper route and get to the lake. We might even follow the instructions from the book this time and start from Waterfall. 🙂
Hike from Heathcote to Waterfall
