Royal National Park

About

The Royal National Park is a protected national park that is located in the Sutherland Shire local government area in Southern Sydney and in the City of Wollongong local government area in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. The 151-square-kilometre (58 sq mi) national park is about 29 kilometres (18 mi) south of the Sydney central business district near the localities of Loftus, Otford and Waterfall. It was founded by Sir John Robertson, Acting Premier of New South Wales, and formally proclaimed on 26 April 1879, a mere 7 years after Yellowstone National Park (1872) and 11 years before Yosemite National Park in the United States. Although Yosemite had been federally protected land since 1864, it did not become a 'National Park' until 1890. It was the first national park to be declared in Australia. Its original name was just National Park, but it was renamed in 1955 after Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia passed by in the train during her 1954 tour. The park was added to the Australian National Heritage List in December 2006.

The park is situated in traditional lands of the Dharawal, an Aboriginal Australian people. The park includes today's settlements of Audley, Maianbar and Bundeena.

Audley can be accessed by road from Loftus, Waterfall or Otford, and there are several railway stations ( Loftus, Engadine, Heathcote, Waterfall, Helensburgh and Otford ) on the outskirts of the park. Bundeena and Maianbar can also be accessed by road through the park or by the passenger ferry service from Cronulla.

The national park once had its own dedicated railway station, part of a branch off the Illawarra Line. The branch closed in 1991, and has since been converted to a heritage tramway operated by the Sydney Tramway Museum.

There are numerous cycling and walking trails, barbecue areas and picnic sites throughout the park. Over 100 kilometres (62 mi) of walking tracks take in a wide range of scenery. Cycling is allowed on some fire trails and only on specially marked tracks within the Park. The specially marked mountain biking tracks are bi-directional; care should be taken when traversing these trails. A fee of $12.00 applies when taking a car into the Park.

The most popular walk is the Coast Walk, which skirts the park's eastern edge and delivers exceptional coastal scenery. It is a 30 kilometre track, involving walking from Bundeena to Otford, or vice versa. It's recommended that walkers allow 2 days for the walk. This walk is often done as part of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award. The Wallumarra Track (Wallumarra is an Aboriginal word for education/protect) was constructed in 1975 to meet the growing need for Environmental Education and as a supplement to the park's walking track system. The park is intensely used for environmental education by schools, TAFEs, universities and other groups.

The park has been burnt in bushfires on several occasions, most notably in 1939, 1994 and in the 2001 Black Christmas fires. Australian native bush naturally regenerates after bushfires and as of 2008 few signs of these fires remain visible. In times of extreme fire danger the parks service might close the park to ensure visitor safety.

There are camping sites at Bonnie Vale, North Era and Uloola Falls. These are the only places where camping is permitted within the park, and they are regulated with a booking/registration system, which requires pre-booking a site. The park charges a vehicle access fee, but is free for people on foot.

Royal National Park contains a wide variety of terrain. Roughly, landscapes in the park vary from coastal cliffs broken by beaches and small inlets to an ancient high plateau broken by extensive and deep river valleys. The river valleys drain from south to north where they run into Port Hacking, the extensive but generally shallow harbor inlet which forms the northern border of the park. When looking across the park from east to west (or vice versa) the rugged folds of valley after valley fade into the distance.

The geology of the site consists mostly of the Triassic Hawkesbury Sandstone with some sections of the park having the more recent richer Wianamatta shale capping. Deep below the Hawkesbury sandstone belt lies Narrabeen Shales which is mixture of shale and sandstone under which and within which are untapped coal seams which run right through Sydney and are mined extensively where they come closer to the surface south of the National Park near Wollongong. Sections of recent alluvium fringes of estuarine watercourse where the endangered ecological communities; swamp oak woodlands and swamp mahogany woodlands grow still.

Running the full coastal length of the park is a coastal heathland characterised by hardy, low-growing, salt-tolerant shrubs that spread across rocky, hard terrain with very little topsoil. The coast itself is composed mostly of high cliffs reaching a height of nearly one hundred metres at the southern end. These cliffs are punctuated by a number of fine, sandy beaches open to the ocean and providing fine swimming and surfing. Several of the beaches can be reached by road, others only by several hours of bush walking. There are a small number of rocky coves. The beaches, two of which have volunteer surf life-saving clubs and large car parks, are amongst the most visited areas of the park. These heath lands are a hotspot for many small birds that have forsaken the suburbs of Sydney such as the New Holland honeyeater.

Common vegetation on the exposed heaths on the headlands and cliffside paths include Coastal rosemary, darwinia, bracelet honey-myrtle, she-oak, white kunzea, sundew, grass trees, ridged heath-myrtle, snakehood orchids, prostrate forms of coast banksia and long-leaf matrush.

Common vegetation on top of the ancient sand dunes above the coastal path includes silver banksia ( Banksia marginata ), scrub-oak ( Allocasuarina distyla ), silky hakea ( Hakea sericea ), and pine heath ( Astroloma pinifolium ).

Sections of rare and threatened clifftop grasslands occur along exposed and windy sites which are generally dominated by long-leaf mat-rush and kangaroo grass ( Themeda australis ).

Many heath specialist birds are present in the heaths which include Lewin's honeyeater ( Meliphaga lewinii ), New Holland honeyeater ( Phylidonyris novaehollandiae ), beautiful firetail ( Stagonopleura bella ), chestnut-rumped heathwren ( Hylacola pyrrhopygia ) and the southern emu-wren.

In Royal National Park, littoral rainforest (often the first type of vegetation destroyed during coastal development) has survived the ravages that occurred elsewhere during the 19th and 20th centuries. An example of this vegetation occurs in the southern stretch of the Coast Walk, often referred to as the "Palm Jungle", and includes a typical tuckeroo ( Cupaniopsis anacardioides ) forest, under grown by coastal tea tree ( Leptospermum laevigatum ) and long-Leaf matrush ( Lomandra longifolia ).

Moving farther inland the terrain rises to a series of very rocky ridges and plateaus characterized by hardy, low-growing shrubs and very poor, rocky soil. These ridges are the remnants of an ancient, much larger plateau that has been deeply eroded into an extensive series of river valleys. This specific ridge land habitat is particularly significant for Sydney as most similar habitat was left unprotected and was subsequently destroyed to make way for cheap development which has made many species only found ridges threatened with extinction due to extreme habitat clearance/fragmentation. Soils on plateau land are often up to 2m deep and consist of on sandstone ridges: sandy podsol interspersed with pockets of clay derived. Clay Ridges and Plateaus also have deep Soils but are far rarer due to lack of representation in the park on these sites the soil is derived from Wianamatta clay and is considered rich land producing good quality forest.

On the sides of the steep river valleys that punctuate the uplands the terrain changes to exposed rock with collected pockets of soil. Although still fairly rocky, a large number of eucalyptus and other tree species are prevalent. Small streams are to be found reasonably frequently and understory plants cohabitate with the larger trees, although the terrain is still fairly open and easy to move through. Tree heights in this area reach an average maximum of about ten metres. The plant mix and geography conditions in this area are typical of much of the terrain in the coastal areas of New South Wales but with many widespread genera having highly localized species in the Royal National Park. This sort of habitat is one of the most floristically diverse in Sydney Basin.

This environment is classed as sclerophyll open forest and is divided into "dry" and "wet" sclerophyll forest. Factors that shape this habitat are primarily bushfires, low phosphorus/nitrogen levels, intense summer heat and low water levels. Resulting in a diverse floristic assembly of flora and fauna with apparently divergent paths in similar habitats, for example scribbly gums ( Eucalyptus racemosa / sclerophylla / haemastoma ) have smooth barked trees in a manner which reduces their chance of catching on fire while stringy barks ( Eucalyptus sp. ) have bark which easily catches alight clearing the way for its fire-stimulated seedlings.

Commonly encountered vegetation in this environments include but are not limited to; Sydney redgums ( Angophora costata ), Sydney peppermints ( Eucalyptus piperita ), Port Jackson pine ( Callitris rhomboidea ), red bloodwoods ( Corymbia gummifera ), Pomaderris sp., old man banksia ( Banksia serrata ), hairpin banksia ( Banksia spinulosa ), rock banksia ( Banksia oblongifolia ), Sydney boronia ( Boronia ledifolia ), native sarsaparilla ( Smilax glyciphylla ), violet twining pea ( Hardenbergia violacea ), dusky coral pea ( Kennedia rubicunda ), the traditional narcotic hop bush ( Dodonaea triquetra ), native pea ( Dillwynia sieberi ), sometimes dwarf apple ( Angophora hispida ), parasitic devils twine ( Cassytha sp.), native panic ( Entolasia stricta ), Lepidosperma sp. grass, forest grass trees ( Xanthorrhoea arborea ), Sydney waratah ( Telopea speciosissima ), flannel flowers ( Actinotus minor as well as Actinotus helianthi ), blueberry ash ( Elaeocarpus reticulatus ), silky hakea ( Hakea sericea ), variable bossiaea ( Bossiaea heterophylla ), bonnet orchids ( Cryptostylis erecta ), hyacinth orchids ( Dipodium variegatum / punctatum / roseum ), Pomax umbellata, native parsley ( Lomatia silaifolia ), edible native currants ( Leptomeria acida ), broad leaved geebungs ( Persoonia levis ), Sydney golden wattles ( Acacia longifolia ), gymea lilies ( Doryanthes excelsa ), various sheo-oaks ( Allocasuarina littoralis / distyla / verticillata etc.), flax leafed wattle ( Acacia linifolia ), bracken ( Pteridium esculentum ), grey spider flower ( Grevillea buxifolia / sphacelata ), red spider flower ( Grevillea oleoides ), pink spider flower ( Grevillea sericea ) and native iris ( Patersonia sericea / glabrata /longifolia ) to literally name a few of the hundreds of beautiful flora encountered in this diverse and widespread habitat. Even certain hybrid species may be encountered such as the common Banksia ericifolia x spinulosus or the rarer Angophora costata x hispida.