Reflections of a Rural Social Worker: Grieving for losses: Fire in Crowdy Bay National Park, NSW North Coast

This fire occurred early in the season, in October last year, but today a small fire is burning again. We visited this National Park for the second time in the winter of 2011, and would be happy to return in the future once it re-opens. The camping areas were beautiful and the walking tracks spectacular.

We drove around to Crowdy Head, where we found a fishing fleet and a small lighthouse, situated on a headland with breathtaking views in every direction. We ate our lunch here with John spotting for whales (unsuccessfully) over the turquoise blue sea and me admiring the view over Crowdy Bay where the sun turned the sea silver and the mountains backed the long beach bordering the national park.

Now we returned to drive back up through Crowdy Bay National Park, but this time taking side tracks to points of interest, the first of which was Crowdy Gap. Here we took a 340 metre walk to the beach. For the shortness of its length, this track left many impressions – the intensity and variety of the bird calls in the forest, the bridge over the bog where the dark water would have come up to our calves, the fallen many branched Banksia over the track (making for interesting navigation) and emerging onto the beach to look directly across to the houses of Crowdy Point.

Our next detour was to Abbey Creek Picnic Area and here an unofficial goat track took us the short distance to Crowdy Beach (a little further around than where we had just been) but no creek could be found, even by scanning up and down the sand on the beach with our eyes.

We now travelled back to the northern section of this national park and, after turning in towards Kylies Beach, we travelled south to Fig Tree Parking Area. And a short walking track took us through a forest and across low vegetated dunes to what was now called Kylies Beach. But the 4WDer that cruised past us here and those we could see beach fishing further north, could all drive seamlessly from here down Crowdy Beach!

Whilst back-tracking up to our turn off point, we decided to bypass Mermaid Parking Area (as it was just another access to Kylies Beach) and proceed up to Kylies Beach Camping Area and Car Park instead. Here there were a number of campers and we followed the 4WD beach access track (by foot) onto the northern end of Kylies Beach, where the dark tannin coloured waters of a creek flowed rippling across the sand to merge with the waves that were crashing over jagged rocks.

After driving to Indian Head Campground we walked in to view Kylies Hut – previously built for the writer Kylie Tennant who loved to come to this area when she lived in Laurieton. The hut was in a lovely quiet, secluded and sheltered area, so it was not surprising that it was appreciated by Kylie. After this we returned to Laurieton, where we were based in our caravan.