Travelogue: Australia – Murramarang National Park (Part 4: Perfect Seclusion!)

This weekend’s side trip is to Murramarang National Park, on Australia’s eastern coast in New South Wales. Our last stop of the day was Depot Beach, only a mile-or-so down the beach from Pebbly Beach. We were told that this was a beach where the kangaroos came down to sun themselves in the early morning and the late afternoon.

I can see why, it is a lovely, secluded place!

We had to take a rutted, rocky road down to the parking area, then make a hike through the tropical forests down to the beach itself. It was an absolutely lovely location!

 The day was absolutely chockablock with things to do, things to see, places to go. It was such a lovely day and the scenery was so cool that I burned through an entire camera card and battery shooting to get the right shots!

When I am hiking back at home in Colorado, I like to find a location that I cannot see any evidence of man, shut down my senses to include only the things I can see in front of me, concentrate on the scenery, and try to imagine what it would have been like to be one of the early settlers moving across the plains, to the mountains to the west coast of the US.

Here, I did not have to try too hard to shut-out the evidence of man. I could easily imagine what this place looked like when the first Europeans landed. It is easy to see why they stayed! Well, that and the fact that they had been prisoners consigned to stay here… But that is another story.

There were no kangaroos in sight, but there was evidence that they do come here! …if you take my meaning! We spent a while exploring and then hit the road. I wanted to get back to Canberra before it got too late. Hitting a kangaroo or a wombat on the road was not an Australian experience I wanted to have!

Wherever you are this morning I hope that you are still feeling the afterglow of an excellent weekend!

Don Bergquist – 29 March 2012 – Canberra, ACT, Australia