Located adjacent to the coastal town of Woodgate in Queensland, the National Park Boardwalk is part of the Burrum Coast National Park. The boardwalk is an easy trail to walk through the tea-tree wetlands. The leadup to the boardwalk is a bitumen path, so it is an easy grade-1 walk all the way, suitable for wheelchairs.
The boardwalk (and the leadup to it) is around 400 metres one way, so around 800 metres return. Around half of the walk is along the boardwalk itself. Most of the area is a drier vegetation with banksias and the odd clusters of palms, in particular near the tea-tree wetland part.
The satellite view on Google Maps shows the band of tea-tree wetlands, roughly running from the top-left to the bottom right in the image shown below.
The boardwalk itself start and finishes as it crosses the band of the tea-tree wetlands. You can hear frogs croaking and ground is constantly covered with water through this section. As soon as the water is gone, the boardwalk finishes. From here, you can turn around and head back or continue on a circuit section of the Banksia Walk.
Without a clear recommendation of which direction to walk a circuit, I usually head left – to go in a clockwise direction. Another influence for me was that is the direction my AllTrails route went, so this is what I did for the Banksia track. I found the signage to only cater for people walking in an anti-clockwise direction. It wasn’t difficult to follow (I had AllTrails anyway) but at some intersections I had to check the other end to see if signage existed directing in the other direction. Walking in an anti-clockwise direction makes the signage and the track easier to follow. I’ll describe what I saw in reverse so it better follows as it would be if I had walked anti-clockwise.
Turning “right”, the Banksia track initially follows roughly along the line of the tea-tree wetlands, so the vegetation has a mix of Banksias and more tropical. On AllTrails, it has a feature marked as The Palms. I was expecting a grand display of palm trees and plants, but I’d describe it as a clump of palms. Shortly afterwards there is another short boardwalk to cross a shallow creek. It had water but not flowing. The leadup to the boardwalk was muddy and appeared someone had placed some palm fronds on the mud to make it easier to walk over. It really wasn’t that bad and I was able to get over it without making a mess of my shoes.
The trail then heads further away from the tea-tree wetland area, and the Banksia becomes noticeably more prominent. Silver Banksia (I think that is what they are) flower from February to July, so being August it wasn’t the best time to see them in their full glory. They can flower later in cooler environments, in Tasmania they flower from September through summer to April. There were a few young bottlebrush shaped flowers displaying their bright yellow spikes, perhaps confused by the colder winter this year. Some of the older flowers had the seed cones growing off them and some of them had already opened to disperse the seeds, displaying the full cycle on the trees.
The trail comes to another junction, joining what appears to be a service road and fire trail. The fire trail is slightly downhill but is of very soft sand. On a beach I seek out the edges of the wet sand to make it easier to walk on. No such option was available along here but towards the edge there was a little more vegetation and dropped leaves that made it a little firmer and easier to walk on.
The track then turns left, off the service road and thankfully away from the soft sand, to once again follow along the line of the tea-tree wetlands with the mixed vegetation. While not strictly followed, it seemed like the palms were on the right side of the track (towards the tea-tree wetlands) and Banksia found on the other side of the track.
The trail then comes back to the junction where the boardwalk comes out. Walking back along the boardwalk returns you to the parking area. The walk was enjoyable, and if I had the time to do so, would be a good 5 kilometre-ish trail run that is mostly flat. It summer, I would imagine it would be a hot walk, missing out of any coastal breezes, blocked by the tea-trees and banksia scrub.
