Nattai National Park

Description

Nattai is a national park in New South Wales (Australia), 150 km southwest of Sydney. It is part of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, and primarily encompasses the valley of the Nattai River, which is surrounded by spectacular sandstone cliffs. The park is covered in dry sclerophyll (hard leafed) forest - mostly eucalypt, and has fairly frequent forest fires. It is largely an untouched wilderness area.

The park adjoins the Kanangra-Boyd National Park (which is to the north). Lake Burragorang (water supply for Sydney) also borders the northern side of the park, and there is a 3 km exclusion zone surrounding into which entry is prohibited.

The Nattai receives very few visitors, as it has virtually no facilities and is fairly remote, despite its proximity to Sydney.

In past times, small parts of the land that is now Nattai National Park has been used for oil shale mining and grazing.

Nattai National Park has several worthwhile hikes, however it is a remote area, and also very dry. Bush camping is allowed anywhere outside the Lake Burragorang exclusion zone, but destruction of plants is not allowed, so choose your campsite well, and use tents with smaller footprints. At the Mittagong visitors information center you would should try to get a copy of a yellow covered book that discusses in depth walks in the Nattai, it is invaluable. The book was published in 1998 but hopefully it is still available, it is a great reference for this little known and isolated area.

In summer it can be extremely hot walking along the fire roads, and at camp sites is far too hot to get inside a tent until quite late.

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