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Corn Trail offers up rich plenitude of flora and fauna
WALKS
Murray Dow
OTime: 5 hours. Distance: 12km. Maps: A
leaflet is available from the Braidwood Muse
um, 186 Wallace Street, Braidwood, Phone
048 422 310. Take with you: Water, lunch.
Access: 23km from Braidwood on the Kings
highway 50m before the road starts the wind
ing descent down Clyde mountain, the turnoff
to the top of the track is marked on the right.
Follow this 1.6km to the carpark. The access
to the bottom is 8km further along the high
way. Turn right down the Misty Mountain
road, and follow this good dirt road 14.6km to
the No Name road. Turn right and 4.5km
further the car park is clearly marked. It is a
good idea to walk down to tne Buckenbowra
river to see where the road crosses the river.
If you cannot arrange to be picked up at the
end of the walk, it is necessary to do a "car
shuffle".
THE Corn Trail was first used in the
1830s to trade produce with the
Southern Tablelands. Corn was carried
from the valley by packhorse. In 1987, the
track was reconstructed by local historians
as a bicentennial project.
The track is best done in dry weather, as
leeches can be a problem in wet conditions,
though I saw none. The display of wild
flowers and forest makes it a fitting walk for
the first described in this column outside the
ACT, and is certainly worth the 2 hours
spent in doing the car shuffle.
Follow the rough boggy dirt road past
red-flowering heath (epacris longiflora),
prickly shaggy pea (oxylobium illicifolium)
with holly-like leaves and yellow flowers,
and purple-flowered tetratheca. Two wattles
common along the track are acacia obtusi
folia (long leathery leaves) and acacia ter
minalis (large pinnate leaves with a
prominent gland).
After about 20 minutes, at a large cairn
just after a burnt log around which vehicles
have driven, the walking track is easy to
pick up heading left (east) around a low hill.
The silvertop ash, (persoonia) and sour
currant bush with refreshing lime flavoured
. green fruit changes as you round the hill to
' ferns, creepers (smilax, hibbertia) and water
gum (tristania).
There are views of Pigeon House moun
tain to the north as you start the descent,
and as if on cue a Wonga pigeon gives its
persistent honk. Below is the catchment of
Sugarloaf creek which you would have earli
er forded when setting up the car shuffle.
On walking out on to a narrow ridge we
saw correa, tall everlasting (helichrysum ela
turn) and angophora, with a light grey hard
bark.
The track then descends very gently, and
with a final zig zag reaches the Buckenbowra
river, a most pleasant lunch spot about 2Vi
hours from the start.
Along the river the^e is rainforest, with
bird's-nest ferns, large native figs, cabbage
fan-palms and sassafras with nutmeg-scent
ed leaves. After five minutes the track
reaches an eroded creek, where you cross the
river, head slightly upstream and then
downstream for 10 minutes through the
open understorey. Follow the cairns careful
ly here.
The track now contours above the river
past kurrajong, river peppermint and an iris
with a white flower (libertia paniculata).
We were extremely fortunate to find three
none Help
flossy black-cockatoos in a grove of black
she-oak. These birds feed almost exclusively
Dn casuarina seeds. Some of the other birds
we saw and heard along the track were ru
fous fantail, black-faced monarch and lew
in's honeyeater.
The forest becomes more open, with a
dense understorey of ferns and burrawang,
some of which had cones the size of pineap
ples. The track reaches the confluence of
two branches of the river, and the road to
the. cars is downstream 200m on the left.
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