You can, of course, rush along, and this track is popular with joggers and cyclists: please keep to the left, and everybody
will be happy. One of the gems, from time to time, is the 'Hanging Swamp' on the eastern side.
This walk can be seen as part of the perimeter track, but it is also a pleasant extension to
the Memorial walk as well.
While there are many ways of taking in this section, I have treated it as running from Node E to Node Z (or even Node Y. There are no rules about the order for following tracks. The starting point, then, is the carpark off Bluefish Road. You can either walk along Bluefish Road (Node I), watching out for traffic, and after you pass the second gate, take the dirt fire trail in front of you. Make sure that you are to the east of the wire fence, and mooch along.
You can, of course, rush along, and this track is popular with joggers and cyclists: please keep to the left, and everybody
will be happy. One of the gems, from time to time, is the 'Hanging Swamp' on the eastern side.
An ordinary swamp is a low point to which waters drain, a hanging swamp is one where some barrier holds the water in place. This hanging swamp can be accessed by a steel track on the eastern side, which winds out into the wetlands and returns to the track again. On the map, its ends are Node O and Node P, on the ground, three vertical posts mark each end.
Sadly, even though we had good coastal rains during 2019, the swamp seemed not to be holding water for any length of
time, but in 2020, the 'Hanging Swamp' came bouncing back.
Still, when the water is in, listen for frogs calling and look for swamp plants like this Drosera, a plant
which gets its minerals by "eating" insects.
The frogs I have hears there are the Sydney Red-crowned Toadlet, Pseudophryne australis (sounds like a creaking door), Crinia signifera (I think: the call is "giddy-giddy-giddy) and the Green and Brown Striped Marsh Frog, Limnodynastes peronii, with a call like timber being hit with a hammer.
Other things to look out for include the coral fern, Gleichenia sp. This grows in weed-like volumes in wet area,
but the present writer has been frustrated for five years, trying to get it to grow from spores.
Another plant that seems to like wet feet is the sedge Gahnia, seen here on the left.
Wherever you see these two plants on North Head, you are in potential wetlands.
Between May and July 2020, the swamp has been home to one or two Black Ducks (Anas superciliosa). In more recent times, there has only been one, and I suspected that a hawk, a fox or our diamond python may have got a feed. In late July 2020, there were four ducks there.
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The page was first created on 11 January 2019, last updated 1 August 2020.