Illawarra’s cantilever marvels

BY EMIE ROY

We had heard about the must-visit highlights around Illawarra many a time, and there were no more excuses to not explore them. After all, Illawarra is just above an hour from Sydney, and of course the magical Grand Pacific Drive is truly enticing! In addition to that, there seemed quite a few different locations we could visit within and around the drive. However, the pick this time was Sea Cliff Bridge, the balanced cantilever bridge in the Northern Illawarra region.

Whilst doing the basic online research before visiting somewhere new, the key words ‘cantilever’ and ‘Illawarra’ brought up a new result - that of a steel walkway with two gently swaying cantilever arms. It’s called the Illawarra Fly Treetop Walk. Just another hour from the Sea Cliff Bridge, this sounded like a perfect combo deal.

Following the Princess Highway and M1 to reach Helensburgh through the leafy Royal National Park, we changed directions to get on to Lawrence Hargrave Drive. Before we experienced the actual bridge, we decided to stop over at Bald Hill lookout to enjoy a bird’s-eye view of the bridge, and it was totally worth it. A glistening seashore lay beneath, transitioning gradually from the azure sky, with the bridge appearing at the edge. A couple of kilometres downhill from the lookout point, there emerged the Sea Cliff Bridge, one of the only seven off-shore parallel-to-coast bridges in the world!

The bridge has two lanes for traffic, a cycleway and a walkway. One could either drive through, or pull over the car and walk up and down the bridge; enjoying the views of the water on one side and cliffs on the other side. A must-do is to look down, and feel the sea right underneath you with its aquamarine waters and the waves that crash on the rocks!

I recollected reading somewhere that the bridge was built after the road had to be closed almost 10 times between 2002 and 2003 - for several days at a stretch on some occasions - due to loose rocks and heavy rain. The bridge opened in December 2005. An 11-year-old school girl, Makenzie Russell, named the bridge, and so aptly too!

An abundance of love padlocks that adorn the bridge symbolise not just the unbreakable love of couples, but the popularity of the bridge as well.

From the bridge, we headed to the gorgeous coastal town of Wollongong, about a half an hour away, for a quick bite. We were back on the road for the second destination - the treetop walk. What awaited us was a warm temperate rainforest, where inhabited chirping cicadas, tree ferns, eucalyptus as well as poisonous snakes.

Grabbing a map from the visitor information centre, we embarked on our journey. The walk is just 1.5km return, and you get prepped to get on the treetops, by doing a brief stroll in the moderately dense rainforest. The walk is quite engaging, with interactive information stands and photo frames spread across the pathway. Passing the sight of woody vines, lilli pillies, soft and hard tree ferns and inhaling the heady smell of crushed eucalyptus leaves, we reached the something that accelerated the swaying of the rails!

It was interesting to note about the soft environmental footprint of this 500-metrelong structure which was built on an existing fire trail in 2007, with only 10 support towers. The 45-metre-high Knights Tower, the tallest point of the walk, can be reached by a spiral staircase. From here, one can see the Illawarra escarpment, along with the coast - chiselled mountain ranges that nestle gentle valleys and a sneak peak of Tasman Sea. For the more adventurous, zipline tours are available on cantilever structure. One can climb on the rails from the ground just as you would on a ramp. It is after you gradually walk a fair few steps that you realise the swaying nature of the rails. The swaying movement grows on you as you walk further, and slowly it sinks into your head that you are walking from one treetop to the other! On one side, we could see people mustering up courage to stand still and look down through the gaps between the rails, and on the other side, there were chirpy children who ran on the structure without a worry, the site too, where you can fly on the cable spans. The treetop walk will cost you $25, whereas the zipline tour will cost $75 per person. You could also do a sunrise tour or after-the-dark zipline tour which provide starkly different experiences.

I guess a comment made by a fellow visitor that we met at Knights Tower sums it up: “$25 is a smallish figure as compared to what we pay for many other means of entertainment. However, this also is the ticket to being a bird, to see life from up above the trees.”