We live a few kilometres up the road from this park, but we had only ever visited the main area around the lake and playground....until geocaching took over our lives ;) One of the first caches we looked for was at the end of the park we'd never been to and it opened up a whole new world of walking tracks in the park for us to take the kids and geodogs. Sadly that cache had been muggled and we never got to find it before it was archived.
We have since found all but one of the other park caches so this seemed a fitting place for our second cache hide in honour of Geodaughter's 11th birthday. The park has recently had a lot of weed removal work done, so one afternoon I suddenly saw a track that had not been visible before. It isn't named on the geocaching app/website map, but it is marked on the Maps inside the park and is called Fern Gully Track.
It lives up to its name as it runs along the gully alongside a stream and it is packed full of tree ferns and many other beautiful ground ferns. As we walked along it we thought "this is where fairies would live", it's so pretty and peaceful. Geodaughter and I decided that was the perfect place for her cache, and we were lucky enough to find a fairy who was happy to hang onto our little cache for us and keep it safely hidden. She has even sprinkled the bison tube with fairy dust to hopefully protect it from muggles!
There are two ends to the track. The one starting near the main car park is a short, flat walk, perfect for the littler kids. The other end of the track has one steep part which is a bit dodgy when wet and is packed with tree roots which make it a bit harder (more of a T 2.5), but is well worth the effort as that's where the best ferns are.
It was really hard to get accurate coordinates, and it took many visits to get a reading that worked more than once (*probably fairy magic*), so we have included a good clue that should make it easier to find. You do not have to trample any vegetation to reach it, even though it is a few metres off the track, as it's located in a nice little clearing.
This park is a great one to visit with the kids. There is a playground, BBQs, plenty of walks and spots to sit for a picnic, the Puffing Billy station, water paddle boats/trikes and the lovely little swimming pool is open during summer.
*Please don't attempt this one on days of high fire danger and be on the lookout for snakes.*