DHARUG NP – 13 May 2026
Back in 2023, I visited a creek in Dharug NP looking for some items that I’d found on one of Ray Meisterhans’ maps. The items that we’d found were amazing. I then poured over his maps and added a trips to my wish list, one of which looked like a dead easy day walk. I might have underestimated the trip when I persuaded Trish and Jeff to join me – and Jeff would claim that some of the description was “ambiguous”- in my defense, I thought it would be a good adventure.
Over the lead-up to the Wednesday walk the forecast went from “rain” to “showers”, and when I checked on Wednesday morning, it looked like we had a 4-hour window of “possible showers”, so we set out at 9.30am from the car park.
So, where are we going and what’s the goal of the walk?
He’s a part of Ray’s map, what appealed to me was the three “axe grooves” sites that he had identified, plus the waterfall, and the “deep saddle”, I thought the saddle might be a nice campsite – yes, I’m still in search of “grassy meadows” – although grass doesn’t actually have to be there! The lines leading away from the deep saddle are creeks that Ray identified.
From the car we headed up the fire trail. At the top of the ascent we came to a “track” off to the right. Trish and I had often wondered what that was there for, so we decided to check it out. Interestingly, it took us exactly in the direction we wished to go, and it was easy walking on the old trail.
At the end of the trail, there was a little bit of almost impenetrable scrub – well actually probably 200m of nasty scrub. Then we started ascending a knoll and it was easy walking and very nice vegetation.
Heading up the first knoll and there’s an “overhang” ahead of us that needed checking out.
Bit of a climb up to the overhang, but it’s still looking good. Maybe it would be a camp cave.
Nah, very slopy and probably only space for one person.
We stopped for “morning tea” and one of the predicted showers passed over, Trish and Jeff decided to get into wet gear. Jeff had bought along poncho-style rain cover, which had hadn’t used before it was like a “twister” game. I think he decided that it was a bad idea. Even with Trish’s help it was had to get on.
The rain lasted for all of 10 minutes! Back on track, I’m loving the terrain a stunning ridge with lots of rock platforms. This walk is turning out better than expected!
It’s time now to start descending to the “deep saddle”. Whilst we had to do a little zigging and zagging to find a safe way down, it was relatively straight forward.
We came across a lot of saplings, lovely green colour and soft leaves, Maureen if you’re reading this can you hazard a guess as to what sort of tree, shrub this will grow into?
We’re soon in the “deep saddle” and it was all that I would have wanted it to be. The “grassy meadow” doesn’t necessarily have to have grass, but NO vegetation that has to be landscaped is necessary. Plenty of camp sites, nice and flat and no ground vegetation that would need to be landscaped. All we’d need would be a water source. So, we headed down to the “creek” to see if there was any water.
We headed down the creek. Trish and Jeff soon lost interest, no water, and whilst I headed down the creek still hopeful to find the aboriginal art, there was none to be found, and more importantly no pools of water for the potential campsite.
It was getting late, so we headed back to the saddle for lunch (and found teeny-tiny leeches) and then headed for our exit route.
The aim of the “deep saddle” was to find a nice easy to get to campsite so that I could take my 11yr old granddaughter on a nice easy overnight walk. Whilst the walk to the saddle was lovely, it was probably too challenging for the granddaughter, maybe the route out would be easier?
For the first 750m of the 1.5k route to the fire trail, the vegetation was, if not horrific, it was close to being horrific LOL. We had been following a creek (yes there was water in the creek relatively close to the saddle) and eventually decided that the vegetation was too thick. So we headed a little west to see if the vegetation away from the creek was easier. This turned out to be the case, it added about an extra 400m to our exit walk, but it was far easier.
The creek did have a lot of water.
And we came across this lovely tree.
We came out near one of the high-tension electricity cables crossed the fire trail, right where we’d expected to hit the trail. I’d been doing the compass and map navigating for the whole day and so was pretty happy to hit the trail it the spot I was heading for. Mind you the day’s navigation had been dead easy.
The saddle was “great”, if I were offering a beginner overnight walk to an adult, this would be perfect, but for my 11yr old granddaughter, sadly “no”, maybe in a year or two but will I be able to do that walk then?
Statistics – thanks to Trish & Jeff: 7.15k walk (I estimated 6k – my bad), ascent: 289m and 5 hours for the trip – yes underestimated that! Are we getting old of what?
Big thanks to Trish and Jeff for accompanying me, sadly for the last 30 minutes’ walk back to Jeff’s car, we were belted with heavy rain, we were all soaked by the time we got to the car LOL.