Before I get into our day I wanted to touch on the wildfires. Since we arrived the skies have been full of smoke. You can smell the fires in the air and the sun has a golden almost orange glow to it. After days of this, my throat is sore and my nose is running quite a bit. Today I have some itchy eyes too. Despite these conditions we have been able to walk almost 50 miles since we landed on Saturday. I’m looking forward to us getting somewhere else in the country that is less impacted by this smoke but our next destination, Canberra, isn’t looking much better.

Watching the news today we learned 15 people have died in New South Wales from the fires and seven of those in just the past two days. The fires are burning over 3 million hectares or 7 million acres.

This is causing us to re-think our plans but it is much worse for the people who are directly impacted by the fires. Last night for the New Years celebration, donations were being accepted and nearly $2 million was collected. That’s pretty incredible!

On to our day… after getting to bed at 2 a.m. we tried to sleep in but were both up by 8 a.m. We had a very slow morning. Jacob said he doesn’t even know how he got out of bed. We ate breakfast, watched some news and about noon decided we should venture outside. Not far from our hotel is Lane Cove National Park. Luckily, the weather calmed down a little today and it was mid-70s when we started our walk to the park.

Jacob explained the trail we’d be taking was about 10 kilometers and with two parts. The first part was challenging and the second part was family friendly. He thought it would be best if we started with the difficult section. When I heard about this trail I thought it would be paved pathways. Oh boy, was I wrong… we started the trail by tromping through grass to a sign in the middle of a bunch of brush which told us to go right. And it continued from there. At many points we couldn’t tell where the trail should be. We ended up traversing some rocks and getting lost by a stream just as another lost hiker approached us. He said “G’day!” And I said, “Do you know where you’re going?” To which he replied that he didn’t. I told him we were also lost. He pulled out his GPS and we looked at it together. Turns out we were going opposite directions so we showed him where we’d come from and he showed us where to go to continue on the trail (click photos to enlarge).

Have I mentioned how nice Australians are? Unlike in Europe where people barely look at you, here people make eye contact and say, “G’day!” or “Hello!” I am extremely pleased that g’day is a thing and I told Jacob I was going to start using it. He asked politely that I don’t. 🙂

From there we were climbing rocks, tripping on roots, getting dirt all over my shoes which until then had stayed impressively clean. But it was all worth it. We saw some amazing wildlife along the way including eastern water dragons. I stopped counting once we’d seen 20!

We also saw Australian brush turkeys…

We saw the the common stingaree…

And we saw a lace monitor which was close to four feet long.

We also heard lots of birds including the Kookaburra. 

At the halfway point of our hike we stopped for snacks in the shade and contemplated whether we could make it another few miles back to the hotel. We decided to do it because this would be the easy stretch and the clouds had come in to cool it down some. 

There were lots of people at the park having BBQs or taking boats on the river. We passed other couples and families walking along. Jacob asked me if that made me feel better since I was paranoid of all the poisonous bugs. I am happy to report that it appears that neither of us were bit by anything. 

Although we diligently looked, we did not see any swamp wallabies. These wallabies are all over the east coast of Australia and there were signs that we might see them on this trail but alas we did not. Perhaps we will spot them or other types of wallabies elsewhere in Australia. 

Our time in Sydney is quickly coming to an end. Tomorrow is our last full day here. We pick up our rental car in the morning and hopefully figure out how to get back to the hotel in one piece. We haven’t decided what else we are going to try and fit in, maybe a ride on the ferry across the harbor?

We will see. Until then!