Burning Palms walk and Jacqui's birthday
The family (but unfortunately Michael and Kris not available) arranged to do this walk on Oct 26, which Jacqui had chosen as a birthday bush walk.
The walk is from a location in the Royal National Park down a scarp slope, to the sea, at a place called Burning Palms, a steep descent of 236 m. We had done this walk many years ago, probably more than once when it was wild. It is now largely a perforated metal pathway including some stone steps and some natural terrain. I estimated that we had walked down about 800 stair steps and
according to my Apple health app we covered over 10,000 footsteps. It’s a very pleasant walk and at the bottom there is an SLSC boathouse and a uniformed crew of Lifesavers but no facilities, water, electricity, toilets or shelter.
There was however a lady remaining in the old wooden boathouse and she offered us two plastic seats on the tiny balcony and actually made us cups of tea. Very welcome!. We had been undecided about whether to complete the whole loop walk or return back up the way we came. The boathouse lady was clear that the direct return would be quicker, even though steeper. So we did. To our utter astonishment we arrived at the top significantly quicker than the descent! We rationalised this by realising that descending on open stairs is a bit wobbly and nerve-wracking, whereas ascending is firmer and with the use of poles we could transfer about 20% of the load to our arms. Straight to the 'bush toilet' there . A bush toilet is a real toilet but no running water, so fairly smelly.
By sheer coincidence the rest of the family arrived at exactly the same moment, having done the loop walk, setting out earlier than we did. We then all drove to a prearranged hotel in a town called Austinmer where we enjoyed a pizza birthday party before returning. The small town of Austinmer joins another small town called Thirroul which is famous for having the acclaimed author DH Lawrence livethere for six months in the 1920s during which time he wrote a book called kangaroo, (of course,)in which he accurately captures the social and political mood of the country as well as the nature of the local working people and their aspirations.
We arrived back home in the late afternoon tired but feeling very pleased. Mary now feels confident that she can attempt longer walks than the simple promenade walk that is a current activity.
