Party: Meg, Megan, Bruce Stafford and Wendy
We started early on Sunday morning, so I could make it back home early to prepare a Mother's Day dinner. So we met up with Bruce at Wondabyne station just before 9 am.
From there, we immediately climbed up a steep section to the top of the ridge. After walking up a short section of the Great North Walk, we turned west onto the track which leads to Pindar Cave. We encountered many big spider webs at the beginning of this track. They looked so beautiful decorated by the morning dew, not until I walked through one later and came face to face with the creature.
The walk to the cave was very easy; the track is quite well defined, only occasionally we had to find the arrows marked on the rock shelves, which would be quite difficult to see in the rain or in the dark. We stopped at a lookout just before the cave for morning tea and some photos of the Hawkesbury River. We continued on after that and walked passed a little pool which had quite a bit of water (enough for a quick dip). Thanks to the recent rain. We arrived at Pindar Cave shortly and surprisingly, there was not a single group of campers. The size of the cave is very impressive, and made me think about coming back here for overnight camping + party later. We then walked a little further up to a waterfall, and it actually had water running down! (Something I haven't seen for a while.) After a long lunch and some photo taking, Megan and Bruce tried to find a way to the bottom of the fall as suggested by the bushwalking book, but didn't find it.
The hardest (and most exciting) part of the trip was at the end of the walk when we tried to catch the 2:30pm train (the next one would be 3:45pm) from Wondabyne station. We had about 15 min for the last 2 km, so there was a lot of jogging and running. Meg and Megan just made it to the station when the train was approaching the platform, with the gate at the crossing closing right in front of them. We felt soooooooo lucky after we got onto the train. That was really the first time I felt so excited and happy about catching the Cityrail.
Thanks to Meg, Megan and Bruce for joining me in this trip. It was a very pleasant walk with nice weather, lots of beautiful wildflowers, nice view of the Hawkesbury River, an impressive cave and a waterfall with water!
Wendy
Here's the link to my photos for the trip; just click on the Pindar Cave album