The Caterpillar - Mount Kaputar National Park

A chance encounter, in the campground at Bark Hut, has us inspired and busily re-stuffing our backpacks with overnight gear. We have only just walked in from three days out in the bush and now this nice couple are telling us how beautiful the Mt Coryah Track is.  Our discussion also reveals that the track will take us close to an un-named mountain of rock we have seen from a distance and are keen to climb. It all sounds so enticing we can't be bothered with our planned rest day. Loading up again with food and water, we stride off up the Mt Coryah track with surprising speed and energy.

Boundary crossing - Washpool & Gibraltar Range National Parks

Low scrub scrapes against my shins and a branch catches at the arm of my shirt. My hands are smudged with charcoal from the trunks of old, burnt stringy barks. I've had to grab them for support as we duck and weave, push and shove our way through the bush towards a distant bunch of rocks that have disappeared behind the dense canopy.

Mt Cordeaux and Mt Mitchell - Main Range National Park

This mountain has been becalmed; held still all night afloat an ocean of fog, which laps silently at the hull of trees beneath the summit. There are faint sounds of imagined movement coming from the valley below; like swells on a distant shore. Then the sun cracks the eastern horizon and golden light reveals that there is no better place than a mountaintop for watching and admiring and thinking and learning.

Circling the Crown - a glimpse of Warra National Park

For the first 5km of this adventure I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. The joy of rolling through the countryside was infectious: an icy wind at my tail, granite outcrops and boulders dotted the hills, fern drenched gullies lay in the moist shade of winter.

With a niggling foot injury putting me out of walking action for a while, Caz and I spent last weekend rediscovering another favourite type of outdoor adventure - cycle touring. It had been years since we had done anything like this and within the first two hundred metres I remembered just how much fun touring was. 

Diamond Head - Crowdy Bay National Park

My notebook from this trip has less than one page of scribbled thoughts and observations - vague descriptions of the golden ocean arch and waves firing through its aperture with the booming of an ordinance range, cormorants diving, a pale bellied dolphin spiralling out of the surf, a sea eagle dad showing junior the ropes of wind along the cliffs. All this, blurred by the haze of drifting cloud on a rain slapped headland. Who has time to make notes when there is so much to see around you. 

Sheer walls, sheer exhaustion - Dangars Gorge

It is in serious, hushed silence that we begin this challenging adventure. The dawn sky has turned dark with heavy clouds. We sneak over a fence and pick up a faint track that snakes its way down a gully towards the base of Dangars Falls. It's a wild little descent. The final third of the route is loose scree and dirt and steep. When we reach the bottom of the falls there are shattered rocks on the gorge floor and the signs and sounds of fresh rock slides are everywhere. But, the perspective is breathtaking. It's the sort of spot that makes you want to whisper. Which is not such a bad idea. The towering walls amplify every sound and as a tiny speck of person in the bottom of a big, moving landscape it is often best not to give voice to questions and doubt.

A freak of nature - Awabakal Nature Reserve, Newcastle

I don't know much about geology but I got a good lesson in wonder from this place.

The ongoing, and the visibly ancient, creation of land and rocks is on display along this small stretch of coast - seams of coal are exposed in the cliff faces, huge chunks of sandstone lie scattered like building blocks. The ocean is taking chunks of rock and earth when the swells are huge and driving. Landslips along the cliff face, especially after heavy rain, are sliding the bush into the sea. 

And beneath that dramatic backdrop is a littoral of rock platforms that have eroded into a beautiful mosaic of shapes and protrusions and grooves. These emerge at low tide and on calm days to make us question the randomness of nature.