My 100 km hike through Myall Lakes National Park was along a route I devised, linking various trails and staying at car camping sites as the hiker-only sites were all closed due to covid. The Myall River north of Newcastle opens into a series of lakes parallel with the coast, leaving a strip of land with lakes to one side and ocean beach to the other. I stuck to this tiny sliver of land so I could experience both the river/lakes and the ocean beach. I intended to do an out and back hike with variations, within the limits of the rather few long trails in the park.
7 July 5.7 kms. I had zipped up to NSW in a big hurry before the NSW border closed and got to Myall Lakes so quickly that I was able to start the hike a day early, although only at 4pm, and I had forgotten that it is dark here at 5pm. It was a sandy trail, mainly heath vegetation and banksias. It was just getting dark as I reached the campsite, a bit away from the trail, which was crowded with car campers, everyone packed in close together. There was no water there, only a tank with a broken tap. The campsite was behind vast high sand dunes, too dark to walk on that evening, and I could hear the ocean but not see it.
It rained all night; I could hear splashing on the bare ground around me and in the morning my tent was dirty. This was definitely the low point of the hike.
8 July 23.8 kms. My neighbour campers kindly gave me some water and I returned to the trail. After a while I lost it and walked by the road. The point at which I turned back to the trail and went properly into the bush is when I decided that this was going to be a good hike after all.
The bush was a mix of dry schlerophyll and bright green cabbage tree palms. Soon I came to the Myall River and a little campsite where two kayakers were just packing up. A lovely place for my morning coffee. I continued through the mixed vegetation and not long after I skidded and found myself lying on my left side on the ground. It was hard to get up with the weight of my pack and I had hurt my shoulder. I came to wetlands, lots of paperbarks, with long stretches of boardwalk which were too slippery for my liking.
I emerged at Mungo Brush by the main lake and one of the most popular parts of the park. Then I had some road walking but the road was right beside the lake. I stopped at a little sandy beach for lunch.
Soon after I turned down a fire trail which I would mainly be following for the next 40 kms. But right now I only did a short bit before turning off for Johnson’s Beach. On the way I climbed to a wonderful lookout in a clearing with views over the lakes and towards densely forested hills. Johnson’s Beach was a great campsite and I had a small section at the lake edge all to myself. In hindsight I’m not sure this was part of the camping area. It was cloudy and this made for an interesting sunset. There was a water tank and a sign saying the water was strictly for hand washing or penalties apply but I had no qualms about taking some, especially as it had been raining, and my punishment was the glacial pace at which the water trickled from the tap. It rained again at night but without the splashing.
9 July 24.8 kms. In the morning I returned to the trail and plodded along past paperbarks and then scrub, with high banksias and grass trees and tiny purple and white wildflowers. I was pleased to cross paths with two hikers and we chatted. They said they had brought 14 litres of water (but I’m not 100 percent sure they didn’t say 40 litres - they had big packs). Water is clearly an issue here for hikers. I stole water from every tank I saw. The water in the lakes is brackish and undrinkable; I tried it.
After ten kms the fire trail made a turn and I was in schlerophyll forest again. For my coffee break I pulled a narrow log out of the forest so I could sit beside the trail. It was very peaceful. At the end of the trail I had to walk three kms by a busy road (and I noticed too late a sandy trail just inside the forest for about half the distance).
I came to Neranie Head campsite, part of which was on the lakeshore. The campsite was in two sections and a constant stream of cars and caravans came to look at the section by the lake then retreated to the forest section. Nice for me! I sat by the lake for a long time, watched a kookaburra and tiny birds, and the mozzies were bad.
10 July 30.2 kms. I retraced my route from yesterday, managing to use the sand trail beside the road, which was horrifically steep. Then I got onto the 20 kms of fire trail. A highlight was a long chat with a mountain biker who was riding from Sydney to the Queensland border. I also noticed much more variety in the vegetation than before. Both days there were what sounded like fighter planes doing exercises overhead. And some noisy black cockatoos.
After this I walked along the lake edge again and sat by the lake at a different campsite for lunch. I watched some windsurfers on the lake having a better time of it than I had when I did this here many decades ago!
Then I detoured over to the ocean beach to see if walking along it tomorrow would work. It certainly would: this was an endless stretch of sand, long, low, lightly vegetated dunes and a view of Broughton Island. However, the sky looked very black ahead so I left the beach for Mungo Brush campsite, where I took a lakefront site and was pleased it was less busy than it had been when I was here yesterday. There were a couple of bush turkeys strutting around and heaps of mozzies, but the bad weather didn’t come my way.
11 July 15.9 kms. It started to rain just as I got up. I walked back to the beach through a wonderful grove of banksias and headed south down the beach. The sand was quite sculpted so it was hard work going up and down and often the sand was soft. There was nothing but sand and surf and the big island. Then within half an hour I saw my first dolphins. It was raining lightly and this was pleasant. Later I saw more dolphins.
I came to Dark Point headland and crossed it via the dunes. On the far side the beach was flatter and fast walking but I shared it with 4WDers. At one point, presumably at the back of my first night's camp, the dunes were enormous. I walked atop the lower dunes for a while for a change until I came to my turn off back up to the road. The trailhead where I had parked was just across the road.
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