Emu Plains to Warrimoo (21km)

 

Having crossed in Sydney basin – in six days spread over several years – from Watsons Bay to Emu Plains, a sparkling early-winter Sunday of the June long weekend seemed like the perfect time to bid farewell to the coastal lowlands and start heading up towards the continental divide.

The walk began in the less than idyllic surroundings of Emu Plains station car park – which did at least have the minor honour of being the terminus of my previous westward trek, almost three years ago.

The view west from Emu Plains station overpass

 

Over the tracks to the southern side of the line, and soon onto the Great Western Highway, for a long time the main road to the Blue Mountains and beyond, before construction of the M4 a few kilometres to the south.

Those of us who live in coastal Sydney think of Emu Plains as being at the foot of the Blue Mountains, but in fact I had to cover more than 4 kilometres before the route really started to rise. Those early kilometres took in pleasant parks and boring suburban streets: the usual range of delights offered by urban walking.

 

I also passed charming St Paul's church and – this being Sunday and the west door being open – briefly stepped inside. The adjacent car park was busy, but although the old church was open, the service seemed to be taking place in a nearby, much more modern building. Judging by the quality of the music coming from that venue, I can only guess the worshippers had correctly judged that they would have been struck down by a thunderbolt if they'd dared desecrate this beautiful old space with their dirge. The Anglican tradition has some of the most stirring and glorious sacred music of the past few hundred years; why congregations turn their back on that is a mystery to me. But I don't have a dog in this fight and – judging by the numbers attending this day – I'm clearly in the minority in my preference for old hymns.

St Paul's outside...

 

 

... and in ...

... and identified.

Eventually the streets started sloping upwards, and soon I was back on the last drivable stretch of the Great Western Highway. A few hundred metres on, the old road becomes a walking and cycling path  rising gently as it heads south, the roar of traffic climbing the curves of the new highway a constant background presence.

The line of the old Great Western Highway

After a kilometre or so, the path reaches Knapsack Gully Bridge. According to a plaque at the northern end, this spectacular crossing of the eponymous gully is now in its third lease of life: originally carrying the rail line from the 1860s and then the highway from the 1920s, it is now enjoying a comfortable dotage requiring it to support nothing more demanding than a few cyclists and curious ramblers.

The walking/cycling track continued on the far side of bridge, but after a false start I located a track heading off to the right just past the end. Steep steps provided the first real climb of the day and afforded spectacular views of the bridge I'd just crossed.

Looking down on Knapsack Gully Bridge, with the Sydney basin visible through the trees

A few zigzags through beautiful, boulder-strewn bush brought me out on what looked like another abandoned road or rail line, heading south again, although the lack of signage made it impossible to work out what had originally been here. That in turn ended at a suburban street, which led uphill to RAAF Glenbrook, often glimpsed from the highway but never seen (by me) from this angle before. Obviously a stupendously unsuitable site for an airfield, the base's purpose had always been a minor mystery for me. A sign indicating this is the location of Headquarters Air Command Australia suggested it may be more important than I'd previously guessed, but threw little light (for a non-military type) on what actually goes on there. (A quick search of the RAAF website tells me that "Air Commander Australia is responsible to the Chief of Air Force for effectively preparing air combat forces and Air Command Headquarters at Glenbrook coordinates Air Force operations" – which does suggest a very significant role in Australia's air defences.)

Past the Air Force base, the route ducked under the highway (on which traffic had slowed to a crawl as long-weekend daytrippers headed out of Sydney) and then – counterintuitively – turned left, briefly heading east before turning southwards once more through a reserve at the back of some houses. Here the route shown on the Walking Volunteers website was blocked, so I had to take to the streets again and divert a couple of kilometres to rejoin the track. At least that took me past this fine piece of garden statuary – not sure you'd find that in the Bunnings garden section these days.

The sort of horticulture they go in for in Lapstone, apparently

Rejoining the route at Lapstone Public School, it plunged into the bush once more, following the line of an old tramway:

The fact that this had once been a tram route promised reasonably level walking, and in fact this turned out to be one of the most pleasant sections of the entire walk, as the track curved gently over old embankments and through old cuttings that had been abandoned sufficiently long ago to allow the bush to start to reclaiming its territory.

 

Tyre tracks had me worrying about head-on collisions with speeding cyclists, but in the event none materialised, and a couple of kilometres brought me to a spectacular – and spectacularly unfenced – lookout above Glenbrook Creek and the 'new' western mainline railway.

Looking south-east, with Glenbrook Creek at bottom right and the
mainline tracks running through the centre of the photo

I suspect that on a clear day you might be able to see the city from here, but any more distant vistas were obscured by a band of smoke from hazard-reduction burns somewhere on Sydney's outskirts.

In any event, it was a grand spot for a rest and a selfie:

Old telegraph poles near the lookout

From here it was a short walk back onto residential streets, and within 30 minutes I was passing Glenbrook station and plunging into a village centre bustling with visitors spilling out of coffee shops and blocking pavements in the way only a family of five with two small dogs can manage. Just beyond the slightly manic shopping area, the park was a comparative oasis of peace and quiet, although still busy with families picnicking, playing touch footy or, in the case of one hugely enthusiastic middle-aged man, frisbee throwing. It now being lunchtime, it was also the perfect spot for lunch, and happily I had the bench to myself.

Egg sandwiches: food of the gods?

One of the delights of long-distance walking is the sense of being able to quickly escape from the madding crowd, and within a few minutes I was back in somnolent suburbia and heading towards Glenbrook Lagoon. I'd heard a lot about the lagoon from friends, but despite driving within a few hundred metres on dozens of occasions, had never made the slight detour to visit. This, it turned out, was an oversight. The lagoon is a surprisingly large and beautiful natural lake fed, I learned, by water flow from surrounding areas and natural springs.

Glenbrook Lagoon

At the northern end of the lagoon, a man, apparently somewhat down on his luck, sat on the ground surrounded by several dogs of indeterminate breed. He was talking loudly to a family group, and at first I feared some sort of confrontation was taking place. In fact, it seemed that the parties already knew each other, and I gathered the family – more accurately the woman – was offering the seated man advice on where to get assistance with some of life's necessities, including, very importantly, dog food. Although the man was talking loudly, he sounded cheerful enough and thanked the others heartily for taking the time to offer advice.

I moved on, and soon found myself in another pleasant patch of bush, through which a narrow track gently rose to a slight prominence called Mount Sion, and then equally gently descended past the end of a row of houses and onto the street. That led more or less all the way to Blaxland station, threading under the railway line and then past McDonald's, bursting with long-weekend trade in a down-market counterpoint to Glenbrook's more gentrified food and drink offerings earlier.

The couple of kilometres from Mount Sion to Blaxland station had not been particularly interesting or scenic, and at the station I took stock of how far it was to the next one. Having left the car at Emu Plains, I was mindful of the fact that wherever my walk ended, it needed to be one of the rail stations. As it turned out, it was only a few kilometres to Warrimoo, which would also take the distance walked over the psychologically important 20 km mark. The bad news was that it was all along the road, but the good news was that the road in question was not the highway but the much quieter Railway Parade, on the other side of the railway from the highway.

Quiet it may have been, but it was also fairly dull. The highlight was passing another church, which could not have been more different from the one near the start of the walk.

To the glory of God

Again, I'm not a churchgoer, so it's really none of my business: but I couldn't help reflect that while even the humblest medieval parish church in England carries a sense that its builders intended it to reflect the glory of the Almighty, and while the great gothic cathedrals of northern Europe achieve a transcendent majesty that surely can't help but move even the most devout atheist towards thoughts of the divine, this house of worship carries all the spiritual heft of a telephone exchange. The likelihood of thoughts being lifted towards anything more lofty than what's for dinner tonight seems slim. But who am I to say. If nothing else, top marks to the Blaxland Presbyterians for fully embracing their sect's reputation for dour and earnest piety, almost to the point of self-parody.

From there it was only a few hundred metres to Warrimoo station, where I sat for half an hour with the sun on my back and waited for the train down the hill to Emu Plains. Already, however, thoughts were starting to turn towards the next leg of my westward trek...