Entrance: from Blackman Park, just beyond playground;
Grade: Medium/easy bush tracks & boardwalks with steps and tree roots to negotiat;.
Distance: 1.2kms approximately.
Plenty of car parking, toilets, barbeques & children’s bike track near picnic facilities.
Ventemans Reach, the most expansive and diverse wetland community in Lane Cove, offers stunning water views along the Lane Cove River, native bushland and sandstone outcrops with excellent bird watching opportunities. Boardwalks through the mangroves enable an exciting close-up look without getting your feet wet.
The track hugs the river in a pleasing combination of natural ground, low rock steps, and sections of recently installed raised boardwalk across the boggier parts. Our expert guides will explain how the differences in soil and slope are clearly reflected in the vegetation. Tidal Mangroves and Saltmarsh, salt tolerant She-oaks with their carpets of needles and patches of Warrigal Greens on the river flats, to Eucalypts, Angophora and a beautiful under-storey of native plants and native orchids on the Hawkesbury sandstone slopes.
Coastal Saltmarsh is an Endangered Ecological Community found along the Lane Cove River Estuary and is home to all manner of aquatic life and migratory birds’ dependant on Saltmarshes for breedingand habitat for juvenile fish when inundated.
Bring your mobile phone to engage with the interactive QR codes on some of the very new illustrated signs featuring resident birds and fauna which allows walkers to listen to and identify bird song.
You will also discover nesting boxes for some of the birds and mammals which rely on hollows for shelter. Species richness is high with mammals, reptiles and smaller bush birds that are absent or uncommon elsewhere in Lane Cove
Due to the proximity of fresh water and fishing points, the walk presents a leisurely journey through time and into nature: from the indigenous Gadigal peoples’ use of plants to the concrete slab remains of makeshift houses built during the Depression.
The foreshore bush links Blackman Park with Epping Road and is a testimony to decades of skilled bush regeneration work by Council, however, the track is signed ‘closed due to contamination’ from the footbridge where a huge Data Centre looms large to Epping Road.
Ventemans Reach boardwalk 
Ventamans Reach path
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