Thru-hiking the Great North Walk

The Great North Walk is a 250km long hiking trail from Sydney to Newcastle in Australia.  It was created in 1988 to celebrate Australia’s bicentenary. I decided to hike it basically on a whim. A friend was driving up that way from Launceston. I thought a roadtrip sounded cool so tagged along last-minute. It was a fun and random trip up along the coast.

When we reached Sydney he dropped me off at a backpackers as I’d asked and he continued north to his internship. I needed to study for my final exam, luckily it was online. Yeah, I know. Going on holiday before your exam isn’t the smartest. Meanwhile, I organised with my parents to fly my brother Forrest into Sydney. After hiking the entire Tasmanian Trail solo, I had no desire to do the Great North Walk by myself. Some people were a bit dubious that I wanted to take my 13-year-old brother when I was still only 18. But, we’ve both been hiking lots so neither my parents nor I could see why we shouldn’t go so off we went.

Forrest’s flight was 2 hours delayed. It was past midnight when we got back. I’d been hoping for an early start. He wasn’t too happy when I told him I wanted to get up at 5am. He’d flown in from Western Australia. That’s a three-hour difference in time zones. It would have felt to him as if he was getting up at 2am!

Day 1, Sydney Cove – Towards the end of Lane Cove Valley, 29km

25th of November

I only woke Forrest up at 8.30 so he could catch up on sleep. I wanted to be able to get as far out of the city as possible that day as it’s hard to find places to camp in built-up areas. We checked out of the backpackers and caught a bus to the trailhead. The Great North Walk starts in Macquarie Place, central Sydney. The Obelisk of Distances/Macquarie Obelisk marks the start of the trail. It was erected in 1818 as an official starting point for measuring all the road distances in New South Wales. It stands in what was then the geographic centre point of Sydney.

The trail then goes through the city to where Sydney Harbour is, just a few blocks away. At Circular Quay ferry terminal we waited to catch a ferry across Sydney Harbour to Woolwich. It turned out to be a 50-minute wait with Forrest complaining he could have slept in. I suppose I should have looked at the timetable the night before.

It was an awesome ferry ride and worth the wait. The views of the Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge and the city skyline were spectacular. After getting off the ferry in Woolwich, we zigzagged through beautiful suburbs and past million-dollar houses. There were some trail markers but we kept doing accidental detours.

After a bit we we got into the bush. The track followed the Lane Cove River for some time through mangroves, sandstone and scrub. Although we were walking next to a river, there was only a narrow strip of steep bush on either side, then suburbia. It was quite odd to be in what felt like uninterrupted bush but to hear sounds of the city.

I’d been right. It was hard to find a spot to camp that night. Eventually, we found a fairly hidden spot but it was by no means flat. Forrest was more tired so I took the side with a tree root. It was not a very comfortable sleep.

Day Two – 24km

26th of November

We were out of the Lane Cove area fairly early that day. There wasn’t much of the narrow riverbed track left before we came out in Thornleigh. We stopped at the Aldi to top up our food for the next stretch. After that, we were back on what felt like a rough, remote hiking trail. It was interesting how isolated it felt, considering how close we were to Sydney. The day got hotter and hotter. I started getting worried about how much water we were drinking. The fact that we couldn’t drink out of any of the creeks made it worse. I kept seeing signs warning of pollutants and sewerage in the waterways.

That afternoon we were forced to do a 2km detour to get water from a petrol station in Hornsby. I also bought sunglasses. Now my poor, roasted retinas could have some protection. Not long after that we stopped for lunch and encountered the first leaches of the trip. I may have panicked just a little (okay, maybe a lot) when I felt one on my calf and another on Forrest’s hip. We cut our break short and kept walking until we found a sandstone cave to eat in. That way, we could see any leeches advancing over the rock.

A highlight of the day was seeing a lyrebird just before camp! The rest of the day is summed up pretty well in what I wrote to my parents: ‘Today was long, hot, slow and hard. Bed is so good’.

Once we’d stopped for the night Forrest got straight to doing his NaNoWriMo words. He’s crazy. No way am I walking all day then, instead of getting some extra well-earned rest, handwriting thousands of words of his book.

Day Three – 26km

27th of November

Day three of the Great North Walk started off easily enough. It was fairly cool in the morning. We even got a short section of boardwalk! And a water source! It takes forever to fill up all of your water bottles with a bubbler.

But then it got extremely hard and made me feel stupid for complaining yesterday. It felt like the track just went up and down and up and down and up and down. It didn’t help that it got up to 31 degrees. I’m very comfortable in that weather day to day, but hiking is another story.

It took us nearly five hours to reach the 10km mark for the day which is pretty ridiculous.

It just feels disgusting to have to wear long pants and shirts (to protect from the sun, scratches, leeches and ticks). Although the fabric of my clothes is thin, they’re still perpetually drenched with sweat. I felt damp and sticky all day.

We hit Cowan sometime around midday. This was a real test of our committedness as the trail ran straight through a little train station. We could have gotten on a train and arrived in Newcastle very quickly. It was tempting. Instead, we had a lunch break in the shade of the platform and refilled our water bottles. We were drinking so much water each day. It was a bit of a stress how dry it was and the lack of refill options. This forced us to carry 3L each at some points, making our packs very heavy.

A couple of hours later we found a place to swim! It felt so good to cool off and lifted our spirits immensely. Had a good roll around in the shallow estuary.

At about 7pm we came to a proper campsite. As in, it was legal to camp there, the ground was flat AND there was a drop toilet. No water though.

Forrest wrote, ‘Gabrielle is lazy. She just laid down and crashed while I set the tent up. She started feeling guilty so got up and put half a pole in. Then decided it was too hard so laid down again leaving me to finish.

In my defence, We had heaps of time to set up before dark and my feet really were hurting.

Day Four – Too lost to estimate the distance

28th of November

The day started off well enough. We happily wandered down the track looking for more lyrebirds and enjoying the coolness of the morning.

Then we made it to the tiny town of Brooklyn. It turns out that the ferry I assumed was still in operation was not. Being on a tight budget, I really didn’t want to pay for a water taxi and it was too late to organise one. The other option that the Great North Walk website listed was to take a train to get over the Hawkesbury River. It’s a bit of a shortcut, but is still an official option listed so I don’t think that it counts as cheating.

While I stressed about our options, I bought Forrest a toasted cheese sandwich to keep him happy. He is so laid back, it’s great. He’s all ‘she’ll be right, you’ll work it out’ confidence.

This was the last town on the Great North Walk for a while so we resupplied at a tiny general store. It was so expensive and had almost no options. It was painful swiping the card but hey, we’ve got to eat. Forrest calculated the bare minimum that we needed to be safe. I hoped he was right.

Taking the train across the river was also stressful. We wanted to get off at Wondabyne, the only train station in Australia inaccessible by road. The train only stops there if you go to the end of the train, knock on the conductor’s door and ask them to stop. The platform is so short that it’s essential to be in the last carriage. I only found out all of this last minute by asking a lady and had to rush to the end.

Everything felt like it was going well again and I admired how pretty and well-maintained the track had become. I found the occasional pretty flower. I was talking to a lady on a plane later on who told me that that purple one is a fringe lily.

Turns out that it was too good to be true. I’d taken a wrong turn 2kms back and led us up into the Somersby Falls hiking area. Ah well, two kilometres was no biggy. On the bright side, we got to retrace our steps downhill to get back on track.

And then… we came across this sign. Track ahead closed.

Not knowing this was kind of my fault. Closures are listed on the Great North Walk website. My research and planning for this hike have been pretty poor. A by-product of spending my time studying for an exam instead of in preparation.

Poor Forrest was so exhausted at this point that he fell asleep on the stairs leading up to the bridge. He got impressive stair prints on his face.

I used precious phone battery to research our options. We could either backtrack up to Somersby Falls where we’d ended up by accident earlier. Then walk through town a bit to reconnect with the trail after the closure. Or, we could walk along the highway for a short distance and then through town, avoiding all of the backtracking.

We tried to take the highway option but I quickly decided that it was too dangerous. There was no verge and far too many blind corners with trucks rocketing around them.

So… we had to take the lots of backtracking option. It was pretty frustrating to be honest. The whole day was. I still feel frustrated just thinking about it!

So, there you have it. Our first four days hiking the Great North Walk. Not exactly a positive experience overall but there were lots of fun bits in there!

Hopefully I’ll finish writing part two soon but seeing as this took me six months to write, I wouldn’t hold your breath!