Mount Jellore

This newly upgraded walking track runs through Jellore Flora Reserve to top of Mount Jellore (834 metres) in Nattai National Park. I’m not sure when the track was upgraded, but at some point in the not too distant past it was a rough foot pad complete with a rope aided descent down and up the deep gully of a tributary of Jellore Creek. The NSW NPWS (National Parks and Wildlife Service) Jellore Flora Reserve website has a tremendous amount of information about cultural connection and zero information about the walking track which is very strange as I suspect a lot of money was spent upgrading the trail which now includes a large parking lot, steps into and out of the gully and copious signage.

In any event, it is a pleasant half day walk to and from Mount Jellore (3 to 3.5 hours will see you there and back comfortably) which has filtered views over Nattai National Park. On AllTrails, walkers report seeing Sydney in the distance on clear days (a straight line distance of 100 kilometres) but the bush is rapidly growing high after the 2020 fires and the view from some rocks just north of the trig (there are no views at the trig) are rapidly becoming obscured so visions of the high rises of Sydney are likely to be simply mirages.

The new trail is off Soapy Flat Road, a quiet rural road that takes you past the big houses and even bigger estates of Sydney’s wealthy elite. This makes the juxtaposition between all the cultural verbiage on the NSW NPWS website and the sprawling mansions set amidst manicured estates all the more jarring. Certainly no-one who is professing to being on stolen land here is giving anything back.

There are lots of large and tasteful sandstone blocks acting as bollards all along Soapy Flat Road and, as you walk through the bush on the track towards Mount Jellore past vast mounds of broken glass in old fire pits and rough driven in vehicle tracks, the purpose of these bollards becomes immediately obvious. Gentrification, in this instance, has benefited the natural environment.

The track runs along a broad ridge then descends down cleverly constructed steps to a creek and ascends on the other side. Leeches dwell in the creek, we picked up a few but managed to get the buggars off before they bit in. On the north side of the creek, the track intersects an old fire trail with private property to the west and continues east until it fades out at the base of the final short climb on a good zig-zagging track to Mount Jellore. The trig on top is apparently the first ever established in NSW in 1828 so there is a bit of history to go with your culcha.