Two for one – this loop starts from Coachwood Picnic Area and includes the Coombadjha Nature Walk with the signature Washpool Walk. The Park protects the largest area of warm temperate coachwood rainforest in the world, but you will also walk through other types of rainforest in the gullies, wet sclerophyll forest, and fire adapted dry sclerophyll forest on the north facing ridges.
The highlight is a stand of eleven statuesque red cedar trees that escaped being logged earlier in the century. Stand in awe of these trees, some 50 metres tall and over 1000 years old, with birds nest ferns up in the canopy. Nearby is a large strangler fig. Later, the path passes by a series of cascades and a small waterfall called Summit Falls. Near the end of the walk, visit pretty Coachwood Pool on Coombadjha Creek.
Areas of Washpool burnt in the 2019 fires, and parts of this track have been repaired since. The forest layers are recovering. We saw rufous fantails flitting about the shrubbery, heard bellbirds chiming above and waited for a snake to slither under a log. A section of the trail was dripping with ripe red kangaroo apples, elsewhere fungi were fruiting enthusiastically after a wet summer. There are new integrative signs along the track.
