Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park

 This is rough material: you are in a building site. More to come.

Kuringai, Kuring-Gai, Ku-ring-Gai or whatever, it is a name often given for the aboriginal tribe who lived in the area. These people were either wiped out by disease or drink, or moved out before they could be taught our form of writing, so they have never had a say in how their name was spelt.

The Daruk and Eora peoples lived in the area for thousands of years, and there are plentiful reminders of their prior presence to be observed. And to be preserved: once these are gone, they cannot be replaced. We need to care for these relics from the past.

You wouldn't walk on the Mona Lisa, so why walk on rock art? And yet, every time you go near rock engravings in the Chase, you can see people walking all over the engravings, heedless of the harm they do.

Even rock wears away, if enough people walk on it. Go around the engravings instead. And you wouldn't take away a piece of the Parthenon, so don't take away a piece of a midden. Photograph it instead. The best time to go looking for engravings, or to photograph them, is when the sun is low in the sky, so late afternoon or winter days are good.

This is because the engravings are just grooves in the rock, and time and people have made the grooves wider and shallower than they used to be. When the sun is low, the shadows of the grooves stand out better. Of course, if you are really keen, you would go out after dark, with a kerosene or gas lamp.

Once you realise that aboriginal engravings were usually on high ground, you are ready to start searching for some of your own. One theory says the engravings were men's art, and involved magic, so the sites had to be located where women and boys could not see the ceremonies, hence the need for high ground. Then the sites had to be accessible, so they are usually on ridges, and they had to feature large slabs of flat rock. 

Another theory, given to me by a local geologist, David Roots, says that the locals chose a particular kind of rock, usually found on the ridges because it is harder, for their engravings. There are certainly enough engravings which can be looked down on to make this an attractive idea, and this is supported by the rock usually selected.

You can drive to the park from Mona Vale on the Manly-Warringah peninsula, or from several parts of Mona Vale Road, (route 33) or from the Pacific Highway. You can get there by train, walking in from Mt Ku-ring-gai, Berowra, or even Cowan. In my view, the best of the lot is a ferry ride from Pittwater Park wharf to The Basin.

The park was created in 1894, and has been going strong ever since. There has been a certain amount of damage where home-sick Europeans planted exotic trees, but that aside, most of the land is as it should be, much the same as the Sydney bush must have been before the whites came.

There are some signs of previous occupation by whites, like the barbed wire in the bush near the Duck Hole, and the slope for running ammunition down to World War II gun emplacements at West Head. In some areas, hoons on horses have damaged and eroded the trails down to bedrock, but the area is largely free of trail-bikes and the damage they cause.

Choosing a walk
Roughly in order of difficulty, try the Willunga track, Refuge track, Topham track, Challenger track, Salvation loop, Flint and Steel track, Bibbenluke track, Smith's Creek East track, Ryland track, Bairne track (with or without the Soldier's Point track), Wallaroo track, Elvina track, Basin track, Warrimoo track, and the Waratah track for starters.