Even by Sydney’s high standards – a city of four and a half million people surrounded by national parks – Berowra is absurdly well supplied with wide open spaces.
Upstream in Cowan Creek from Bobbin Head, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
There’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on the eastern side of the railway track. To the west, on the other side of the Berowra creek, Marramarra National Park; to the north Muogamarra, only open to the public on six weekends a year and further, beyond the Hawkesbury, Brisbane Waters, Popran and Dharug National Parks.
Pelican grace at the mouth of Mullet Creek in Brisbane Water National Park
To the south, the second smallest and newest of them, Berowra Valley became a national park in 2012, soon after we moved here. It follows the line of Berowra Creek through the suburbs as far as Cherrybrook.
If you put your kayak in Berowra Creek at the entertainingly named Dusty Hole and paddle upstream, you’re not in the wilderness. On the other side of the park, there’s the horsey country of Berilee and Dural – my go-to place for compost-making – and on this side you’re just a hop skip and a jump from Kuring-gai Industrial Park, featuring Inflatable World, the Steggles chicken factory and a host of timber and roofing suppliers.
But when you’re on the water at dawn, you could be in the middle of nowhere.
White faced heron hunting in Berowra Creek
On a high tide, you can wend your way past the sandstone rock arch quite a way up Sam’s Creek. For all its outsize weeds and murky water, this does not feel like gully just a couple of ks downhill from the freeway.
The mouth of Sam’s Creek
Last weekend, I took a favourite side trip, down an alleyway of mangroves to a waterfall amplified by the rains.
Waterfall into Berowra Creek
Below the footbridge that crosses Calna Creek, by the boardwalk across the saltmarsh, is a good place to pull in and stretch your legs. The Great North Walk and the side tracks up Lyrebird Gully meet there, so there’s always a danger of being being forced to listen to an energetic conversation about property prices from the Sunday morning walkers, but skimming across the shallows up Calna Creek you can almost always outpace them.
There’s even a place to camp on the way at Crosslands Reserve, absurdly close to the Hornsby shops. There’s a hint of civilisation as you pass the run-down convention centre and catch the smell of breakfast bacon, and then you’re back in the fog and the towering eucalypts.
It’s 18ks, or thereabouts, from the ferry to the rock garden that’s the navigable limit of the creek, and back again. And in the hours before the scouts stir in their sleepingbags, the creek is ridiculously quiet. Apart from the inevitable lyrebird, busying itself with car alarm impressions in the undergrowth.
Illuminated trees by the campsite at Crosslands
But on the way back from the headwaters last weekend, something new.
A wedge-tailed eagle in Berowra Creek
A wedge-tailed eagle enjoying the morning sunshine, high above the water.
Of course, there are eagles on the creek every day of the week – on a day out in a boat you’re guaranteed to see the white bellied sea eagles that hunt there, and maybe even hear a few of their embarrassingly duck-like calls. I saw a sea-eagle last Sunday, as usual, waiting above the water for the mist to clear.
White-bellied sea eagle in the mist
And once I saw an osprey by the creek, slightly dishevelled and hungry looking.
But there’s still something special about seeing the largest raptor in Australia hanging at the end of your street. Maybe the leafy north shore counts as the open forest wedgies favour. There’s certainly plenty of rabbits to keep them going.
I’ve been reminded this week that Berowra is more like a country town than suburbia. When there’s a car crash, residents come out to redirect traffic. When your kid falls and grazes their knee walking to school, a passerby scoops them up and drives them home. Lost keys and wallets speed their way to their owners. Maybe the eagles have picked up on the rural atmosphere.
Rural enough for rabbits and roadkill, shall we say, but not so much that we’re not murderously anxious about them carrying off our newborn lambs. With the stories of wedgies poisoned in their hundreds, I’m glad to see them here. And I’m glad to be here too.
More raptor stories from around these parts
Death and good fortune: a peregrine hunting in Cowan Creek
Two sad islands, three whistling kites
Sex, nests and dog fighting: our family of sparrowhawks get in the family way
Death and sibling rivalry: our baby sparrowhawks learn to hunt