Getting To the Royal National Park:

Depending on where you want to visit in the Royal National Park, there are some public transport options. 

Unfortunately, for this particular hike, unless you’re planning to hike from the train station and camp overnight, there won’t be time to do a day trip without a car. 

An hour’s drive from Sydney, you can drive through the National Park to reach Garrawarra Farm car park. The descent down to Burning Palms Beach was relatively easy. The descent is steep but the walk is an hour max to the beach. The path is a mixture of gravel, forest floor, pathed paths and slim ridge lines. 

It is worth noting that there are toilets at the carpark but none by the beach or Figure of 8 pools. So make sure you go to the loo whilst you can. 

The Descent:

You start off at the top of the hill. Walking through the bush on a paved path, the initial part of the walk is relatively easy. It soon becomes a steep descent with a mixture of paved paths, and natural gravel / rocks to walk over. It’s a little tough on the knees, but stick with it, the overall end goal is so worth it!

Once you arrive at the bottom the hill, you’ll walk across the beach towards the rocky boulders to the right (south of the beach). Look out for lizards – we saw at least 12 on our hike.

The boulders range in size and sturdiness. Make sure you where sensible footwear and clothing to reach the pools. It’s not particularly easy but if you have a reasonable level of fitness and mobility level then you should be OK. 

This part is where it is important to get your tide times right.

The Pools:

After around 30 minutes, you’ll be at the pools. When we visited, it seemed reasonably busy, but we only waited a few minutes to have our picture taken in the most famous, actual “Figure of Eight” pool. After that, we spent the rest of the time, dunking in and out of all the pools. They varied in size and depth, but most of them you could touch the bottom. My height is 5ft 7”. One of them even looked like a mini hot tub.

I’m a self-proclaimed water-baby so I’d always recommed taking a dip everywhere we visit but here is particulary special. I don’t know if it’s because of the steep descent and climbing over boulders to get there, or maybe it’s knowing that they’re only visible at certain times of the day due to the tide. But there is something very special about visiting these pools and I knew I couldn’t pass up a chance to submerge myself in them. And as the water is quite shallow, the water gets quite warm quickly. 

Again, give yourself enough time to get back to the beach safely by checking the tide times.

What else can you do?

We spent the rest of the afternoon at Burning Palms Beach. It is patrolled by lifeguards for some of the day and there will be a flagged off swimming section, so be sure to be sea safe and swim where it’s safest. 

Otherwise, you can surf, swim and generally have a great beach day. Depending on the tide times, you may want to do this before or after you visit the pools.

Walking back up is a bit of a killer on the heart and lungs but anyone with a reasonable level of fitness should be able to do this walk. It is a grade 4 – so make sure you look up what this entails and what to expect. The walk down is a clear path with some parts being a laid trail with railings etc, but there are also huge boulders that you will need to climb over.

Would I recommend this hike?

This was definitely one of my favourite walks of all time – mainly because of the pools and not the actual walking – but still. We’ve planned to take our next lot of visiting friends/family to the Royal National Park again and specifically the Figure of Eight Pools.

If you want a true Australian Bush experience only one hour from Sydney, check out my review of the Bullawarring Trail in Heathcote National Park or our Blue Mountains Weekender. 

Important things to remember at the Royal National Park:

• Tide Times
• Suncream
• Water Water Water!
• Appropriate clothing and footwear.
• This is a Grade 4 hike – do you know what this means/entails?
• How do you plan to get to/from park?