Bonnum Pic

It’s a short drive between Bonnum Pic and Mount Jellore, both in Nattai National Park, so why would you not do both bush-walks while you are in the area? Accessed via a public road through private property (leave the gates as you find them) we parked just before the fire trail goes downhill into the Wollondilly Valley and becomes Wanganderry Pass Trail.

A short distance down the fire trail, an old burnt NPWS (National Parks and Wildlife Service) sign marks the start of the trail. There’s scant sign of maintenance here (scant in this case really equals none) but the foot pad is clear enough and a few of the old signs (many burnt in 2020) are still viable so you can follow the track relatively easily up and down two gullies. On the way out, we lost the track coming out of the second gully but if you head roughly straight uphill after crossing the little creek, you will come out into a big fire break beside private property.

The next few kilometres is pretty simple. Walk along the fire break until you it ends and a piece of old blue rope wrapped about a tree marks a very old road that heads roughly north along the plateau. The track is clear enough until you approach the cliff line (Wanganderry Walls) although the regrowth on either side is so thick you could be walking anywhere. There is one short section of heath where the regrowth is open, but most of the way you walk in a tunnel of acacia.

After about five kilometres the trail approaches the north south running cliff line and travels over some nice open sandstone slabs and pagodas. There are views down into the Wollondilly valley. It’s still worth keeping track of the foot pad as between the sandstone slabs the scrub is thick and the further north you go, towards the Pic of Bonnum Pic, the thicker the scrub becomes and the vaguer the foot-pad.

The last one to two kilometres is slow. It is really easy to lose the foot-pad as there seem to be decoy cairns in places and the ridge gains and loses 10 to 30 metres of elevation through thickening scrub. It’s worth searching out the foot pad each time you come down off a sandstone slab to avoid unnecessary bushwhacking. The foot pad, however, is for the most part, a tunnel here, and only visible when you are right up against it.

We ran out of both time and patience with the scrub about 300 metres from the very end, but we hadn’t brought a short rope in any event to do the “slide of death.” The view, unfortunately, is getting obscured as the scrub grows up but there are still spots where you get good views.

Our return was perhaps a bit quicker than the way out although we spent as much time searching for the foot pad on the way back as we did on the way out. I had mistakenly thought that we would recognise the various spots where we had dropped off the slabs into the bush but it turns out that thick brush scrub looks the same in both directions.