A Walk Through the Cascades Rainforest

One of my favourite local walks is the Cascades Rainforest Walk in Macquarie Pass National Park, at the base of the majestic Illawarra Escarpment.

Whenever I enter the rainforest, I immediately feel a sense of calm wash over me. The refreshingly cool air and the gentle babbling of the creek as it trickles across the jumbled river stones seems to work in tandem to soothe and restore both body and mind.

The walk winds its way along Cascades Stream, one of the creeks that flows into the Macquarie Rivulet system. There are some gentle ups and downs along the way, but the track is easy to navigate and not particularly challenging. The return journey can be done in around 20 minutes, but I generally take much longer than that because I’m busy looking for birds and stopping to photograph interesting trees, ferns and rocks.

And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the constant stream of bird chittering, whistling and calling.

I’ve realised during my most recent visits that birdwatching is probably at least 75% bird listening, because so often I never actually see the birds I’m hearing! I’m therefore discovering that I need to brush up not only on my bird identification skills by sight, but also on my ability to tune into the different sounds around me and pick individual bird calls out from the cacophony of the rainforest soundscape.

The call of the lyrebird is pretty hard to mistake. It cycles through an impressive repertoire of mimicked calls - whipbirds, kookaburras, black cockatoos and sulphur-crested cockatoos are frequent favourites - but it does so with such gusto that you just know you’re listening to a performance!

After each walk, I often spend quite a bit of time listening to clips from my videos over and over again and comparing them with recordings from helpful apps such as Merlin Bird ID and iNaturalist. It’s a fun and mentally stimulating way to spend an afternoon - and I still have a lot to learn!

At the end of the walk is the Lower Cascades, a gorgeous waterfall that descends gracefully into a beautiful rock pool below. On a summer day, there is no better feeling than spreading my arms wide and catching the delightful breeze that tumbles down the rock face.

The best place to stand after a sweaty walk on a humid day!

There are plenty of large boulders and tree roots to perch on, so I often spend a few moments sitting quietly and taking in the surroundings before making my way back.

A source of inspiration

As a frequent visitor, I find myself increasingly inspired by the natural beauty of this walk. I’m always noticing interesting shapes, textures, plants and little details that make me want to reach for my sketchpad.

This vine could be a staircase ascending to a fairy’s treetop home.

One day, I hope to illustrate and publish a picture book I’ve written that is set in a rainforest. So on some visits, I’m paying particularly close attention to things I might othewise overlook - the different types of ferns, for example, and the way their fronds overlap to create layers of foliage throughout the forest.

An early concept illustration for a picture book I’ve been slowly working on. I created this over a year ago, and I can see how much my style and skills have evolved since then. When I return to this project, I expect I’ll approach this page quite differently. Even so, I can see the rainforest influence I was deliberately trying to capture in this piece.

Sometimes I take photographs. Sometimes I just stop and look.

Not everything I notice will one day become a finished piece of artwork, but I think that’s part of the joy of having a place like this nearby. It’s somewhere I can keep returning to, discovering a new detail each time.