Canberra Nature Park: Woodstock Nature Reserve

General Information

Grading:  medium 

Distance:  8.5 kilometers 

Total climb:  250 meters 

Time taken:  2 hours 

Map:  Umburra 8727-1S 1:25 000 

Start point distance by road from Canberra GPO:  26 kilometers 

Start point map grid reference:  55H FA 77534 98832 

Destination map grid reference: ACT/NSW border - 55H FB 78466 00899 

End Point:  Same as start

Route

http://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/

Description

Having had a bit of a look at Woodstock Nature Reserve the previous week (link), I decided to go back there and explore it to the point where the Murrumbidgee River reaches the NSW border. In the end we didn't go quite that far, but still were able to explore a large part of the Reserve.

The starting point for the walk was the carpark off Fairlight Road about 900 metres north of Uriarra Crossing. We walked down the management trail in an easterly direction, following the river until it bends in a more northerly direction under the steep rocks below Shepherds Lookout on the far side of the river.

Not far from the point the management trail terminates, although there is a faint track continuing along the river to the north. Unfortunately there are some rather nasty bushes growing next to the track that at this time of the year were shedding their seeds on clothing as we passed. I named these porcupine bushes for obvious reasons:

The spines proved very difficult to completely remove from wool knit clothes and I ended up trashing that particular jumper when I got home.

The annoyance of the spines was partly relieved by another glimpse of the two wedge-tailed eagles that I had seem on my two previous walks. We were able to get quite close to a tree that one of them was perching on, but still too far away to get a decent picture:

 

About 750 metres from the NSW border we reached the management trail that would take us back to our starting point by a mostly different route. We decided that there was little to be gained from going any further along the river to the border as we originally intended, so started our return journey. It was a moderately steep climb from the river up to a point near the Woodstock property where there were some good views in most directions.

At around map reference 55H FA 78888 98875 the track forks, although the right hand track is very faint and partly overgrown. Nevertheless, we were able to follow this track back down to the main management trail at the river. From there it was an easy walk back up to the carpark.