Royal National Park

Although I am "stuck" in Sydney for the forseeable future, I have realised that this doesn't mean that I have to stop exploring. There is so much of Australia that I haven't seen yet and there is so much that I want to see. However, flying to the other side of the country is also not feasible at the moment and this is why I have resorted to day trips from/in Sydney.



The Royal National Park is the world's second oldest national park (after Yellowstone in USA) and is south of Sydney. The first and only time I've been to the Royal National Park was in highschool for a Duke of Edinburgh expedition. I remembered the Coastal Walk to be stunning however a little challenging at the end. This time, I wasn't walking the entire Coastal Walk - since it is 30km-  however I wanted to find the Figure 8 Pools near Palm Burning Beach.











Due to the crazy storm earlier that week in Sydney, I expected the track to be muddy. However, I forgot that branches/ trees might have fallen over the track and that the ground would be covered in leaves. It was a little challenging at times since some sections of the track had turned into a small stream and I wasn't sure if it was meant to be a stream.









The Figure 8 Pools are on a rock shelf and are only accessible during low tide. I had researched the times for the tide which was how I had organised my day. However, when I started the walk on the rock shelf, the tide was starting to rise and I wasn't 100% confident that I would make it back to the beach in time before it reached high tide. The prospect of being stranded or having to clamor across rocks to get back to the beach with high tide didn't sound very enticing.









The walk back to Otford was as challenging as I remembered it to be. The difference was that this time I didn't have a 10kg hiking pack but it was still hard since it was predominately uphill in muddy terrain.

There aren't any shops near the vicinity of the train station aside from Otford Pantry, a cafe known for their homemade apple pies. I'm not the biggest fan of apple pie and when I saw that there was strudel on the menu, I ordered it. What I received wasn't a strudel. It was more like a fruit cake on a bed of apples. Tasty, but I really wanted strudel.







Thankfully I was inside a bus when the crazy hailstorm reached Sydney. I was actually on the Harbour Bridge and the bridge was slightly flooded with little hailstones floating in the water. Madness.


An incredible sunset.
I didn't find the Figure 8 Pools which was my entire aim of the day which was a little disappointing. Not sure if I will try to reach them again anytime soon since it is a 2 hour hike each way to reach the pools.