Black Mountain (ACT)

by Murray Dow

Time: 2-3 hours

Distance: 4km

Maps: Black Mountain walking tracks leaflet, available from ACT Parks and Conservation service.

Take with you: Water, hat, a native plants book.

Access: Drive 2km up the Black Mountain drive then turn right at the touch and see nature trail sign. The walk starts behind the Black Mountain walking tracks map - the Forest track, not the summit track to the left, which heads uphill. An alternative starting point is Rani Road, off Caswell drive.

Black Mountain has the richest flora of Canberra Nature Park, with over 500 species of plants. It is a maze of tracks (my father got lost there once).

This walk is nearly all on intimate foot tracks rather than wide uninteresting roads. The Forest track is level going, through scribbly gum and red stringybark with an understory of Cassinia, hardenbergia and box leaf wattle (small leaf).

When we visited it at the end of autumn, Acacia genistifolia (prickly spines) was flowering. As you curve round to the north, there was Hakea sericea with cream flowers, and on the right native cypress (Calliris enlicherii).

When you reach the track junction turn right down an eroded track where a concrete track comes in on your left. After 5 minutes take the first left at a small cairn. I
mmediately turn left again, heading now south west along a narrow track. After about 10minutes you reach a cross roads where you go left along the blue arrow track.

After a short climb the track descends to a junction marked by two blank signposts, where you get views of Booroomba Rocks in the distance.

The blue arrow track here heads down hill, rather than following the wide fire trial. In a few minutes you cross a gully then turn left (south) along the white arrows of the woodland track past soft grevillea bushes, a dam, then parallel with Rani road to its end where the track veers left uphill. Ignoring the first track on your right, after a short climb turn right up a pleasant foot track on the spur past an old native cherry. If you look back here can see the museum and government house.

After climbing for 20 minutes you reach the west branch of the forest track. Here we saw a pair of speckled warblers. These inoffensive ground nesting birds must suffer dearly the depradations of cats prowling through from neighboring suburbia. Turn right and after crossing an infestation of Phytophthora sp and a foot bridge you are back at the start.