Katoomba to Mittagong - Day 6
Nattai River to Emmett's Flat
- 15.4 km
- 6 hours 9 mins
- Total ascent 138m
- Total descent 91m
This day was about walking down the Nattai to Emmett’s Flat. We weren’t expecting a hard day and it wasn’t that tough, but it certainly wasn’t easy.
We were pretty tired from our escapades the previous day, over Beloon Pass and Travis Creek, so we didn’t start walking until after 10am. Aside from which, a lot of our gear was quite wet and the early morning sun was a good opportunity to dry it out.
When I did this part of the walk in 2008, it was a very different experience. Back then you couldn’t walk down the Nattai River. The river was moslty deep and the banks were mostly vertical and we had to walk down the remnant fire trails and fight thick srub all day. Roll forward to 2026 and the river has been totally changed by flooding. The vertical river banks are now gone and replaced with a metres of washed out rock and gravel.
This is how the river looked when we walked down it. The river banks were gone and you could walk down the river on the flood debris. We probaby crossed the river 30 times and spent a good portion of our time actually walking in the river. If you look at the topographic map and the associated aerial photography you can see signs of old fire trails on the maps and in the photos. We tried, several times, to find these, but they are long gone and walking in the bush was much more difficult than walking down the river banks.
When I walked past this destinctive rock face on this walk, I recognised it from my 2008 walk, and took another photo. It would have been great if I had taken in taken this photo from another 5 metres back to show the river bank in the 2008 photo. In 2008 walking down the river bank or in the river wasn’t a practical option. In 2026 walking down the river and river bank was the only practical option.
I don’t really care if my feet are wet or dry on a bushwalk, as long as I can dry them out properly at night. The thing about walking down the Nattai was having course sand continually getting inside my walking shoes and working like sand paper. David wore gaiters which helped to keep most of the sand out of his shoes. I didn’t carry gaiters, so I didn’t have that option. If I was to do this walk again I would definitely carry ankle gaiters to try and keep the sand out. By the end of this day my feet were pretty raw and aching from lost skin.
At the end of the day we were rewarded with arriving at Emmett’s Flat. I remember Emmet’s flat as a vast open area with many camgrounds. In 2026 there are still many campgrounds but the bush has very much reduced the openess and the range of viable camping areas.
The hill profile shows us gradually walking upstream. The couple of bumps in the elevation profile came from unsuccessful attempts to walk on the old fire trails. There was very little change in elevation from the day’s walking.
