Cecil Hills
Distance:
About 8km and two hours but there are plenty of chances to take some short cuts!
Mostly grass tracks or loose dirt roads. It is an easy walk with some mild hills but nothing complicated or strenuous. The walk is not currently signposted and although there are a lot of side tracks you could take for the most part the walk continues straight and in a roughly circular direction until you find yourself back where you started.
Address:
1092 Elizabeth drive Cecil Hills.
Look for a gate with a long gravel driveway heading uphill behind it. Leave your car somewhere in front of the gate without blocking it. There are several other entrances to the walk including Mciver avenue Middleton Grange and Rene place in Cecil hills.
There are mentions on the Parklands website of their newest walk that will be created in this area. For now there are no signs and no real parking. On the plus side there are next to no people. Just leave your car near but not blocking the gate and walk the few hundred metres up the hill to the aptly named Beauty point. The views from the top of the hill are just amazing, you can see out to the Blue mountains from here.
Once you reach the top of the gravel hill where the water towers are, take a right and then a left to follow the dirt road down the hill.
Okay… So for much of the walk you can hear the M7 in the distance and a lot of the time you can see it but its still a pretty outlook.
Follow the dirt road down the hill for a few hundred metres and ignore the bike path that pops up on your left, Eventually you will reach a decrepit old opened farm gate passing through a rusty barbed wire fence and immediately after it a mown path heading right.
Take the mown path and follow the track as it weaves around a bit and eventually leads to liverpools offtake reservoir.
The reservoir was originally constructed in 1890 and cost 13,000 pounds sterling. It was enlarged in 1933 from 4 million to 37 million gallons by raising the earth banks 10 metres and reinforcing them with concrete. The reservoir is still in use today.
Continue past the reservoir and left to follow the track past the tiny house overtaken by brambles and the odd brick building next to it. From here just take a left or go straight at any fork you find and you will eventually find yourself circling back toward where you came from.
If you take a walk in the afternoons you are almost certain to find kangaroos in the area.
This is one of the more untouched places in The Parklands and it will almost be a shame to see it all fancied up. As impressive as the new plans look Buffy and I will miss having this little secret part of Western Sydney’s parklands to ourselves!
If you are interested to see some of what they have planned in the development you can check it out here..
Other walks to check out..
