Royal National Park

We were looking for a good place, which is different from our regular beach trips for this weekend, as we have been to many beaches recently. Though my love for beaches will never reduce, we just felt that we need to give it a small break. The best thing other than beaches to do in Sydney is visiting National Parks. We were little skeptical on visiting national parks after hearing stories from people around, of various reptiles and creatures that we encounter during the trek. One of my friends recommended us this trek and he assured us that this trek will be free of any of those creatures, which was very relieving. It felt exciting to know that the trek goes along the coast.

We started from Sydney around 11:30am and reached the starting point of the Wedding Cake Rock Trail (69 Beachcomber Avenue) by around 1pm. It included an amazing thirty minute drive in the lush green Royal National Park, with a brief stop at Hacking River in between. (Parking is available beside the river)

After driving for around thirty minutes in the national park, it felt surprising to find a small town(Bundeena) suddenly, which looked like a decent sized residential locality. I wondered on the lifestyle of people in this town, on how they go out to the city when required. We later realised that they use boats to reach the city, they have a small wharf located in a walking distance from this town.

Though the parking for the trail is limited, we managed to park our car outside the houses located there and started our expedition. There are many treks starting from this location, ranging from a few kms to more than 10kms.

We picked up a small trek of round-trip 4.6km to start with. This trek is a part of the Royal Coastal Walk, looks like everything about the park is Royal 😉 The walk was initially smooth, almost straight till the first stop, Balconies.

The first sight of the Ocean is simply superb and the cloudy weather lifted up our spirits.

The rock formations on the way looked like a mixture of white and yellow sandstones, and looked distinct from the usual rocks.

The flora also looked very distinct and felt like desert plants in some places.

There were a series of steps uphill after some point, which reminded of temple steps.

We reached the famous Wedding cake rock after around 45mins.

The rock was fenced recently, as its base is depleted due to tides and can slip into ocean anytime. Tourists are warned not to jump over the fence for photographs. The rock is named as Wedding cake rock as it looks like a white wedding cake. Due to the depletion of iron from the rock, it looked shiny white like a cake 🙂

The views from the rock looked spectacular 🙂

After spending some time near the rock, we headed back to our start point. We were happy that the return journey was mostly down hill and felt easier than the upward journey.