Taking in beautiful beaches, stunning headlands and wild flowers, the Box Head and Tallow Beach Track is one of the best walks on the Central Coast.
It’s a fairly easy trail offering spectacular views over to Ku-ring-gai National Park and the Barrenjoey Headland. A short side trail heads down to Tallow Beach, a gorgeous and quiet beach, nestled between two headlands, which gives it a wonderfully secluded feel.
If you’re lucky enough to be visiting in September or October you can’t miss adding the short Flannel Flower Track to your walk, which has hundreds and hundreds of the beautiful wild flowers in bloom at this time.
Here’s exactly what to expect from the trail.
The Box Head and Tallow Beach Walk
The stats
Distance: 7.9km
Elevation: 260m
Difficulty: Easy - moderate
The Box Head and Tallow Beach trail is easy to moderate, even if you add in the Flannel Flower Trail. We recommend allowing 2.5 -3 hours to enjoy the walk and stop at the viewpoints and beach.
Starting the trail
The walk begins on a sandy fire trail and after 150m you’ll reach the turn off for the Flannel Flower Track. If you’re walking in spring this is a must, but even if you’re not, it’s a very pretty bush track with a great view towards the end.
We’ll describe the walk the way we did it, which includes the Flannel Flower Track, but if you don’t want to add it on, you can just skip over this next section.
The Flannel Flower Track
The trail begins heading uphill on a series of stairs with the odd patch of Flannel flowers here and there, but nothing compared to how many you see a little further along.
After 250m the trail flattens out and heads into the shady forest.
As you walk between the gnarly red gums you’ll be treated to huge patches of the pretty white flowers, which feel just like velvet. They are scattered throughout the bush, but many grow right beside the path and really bring the forest to life.
There are several other wildflowers growing throughout the area but it’s the Flannel flowers which really steal the show.
The path through the forest is completely flat for around 600m until you reach the Lobster Beach Lookout, which offers a great view.
You can continue walking beyond the lookout but this is when it starts to descend steeply downhill to either Lobster or Pretty Beach.
We knew we were going to see Tallow Beach so we didn’t carry on further. If you are walking this trail for the flowers you only need to go as far as the lookout, where the majority of them are concentrated.
Onto the Box Head Track
Returning back the way you came, after just over 1km you’ll reach the junction with Tallow Beach. We decided to first head to Box Head, saving the beach for last.
After a couple of hundred metres you’ll leave the fire trail and head along a slightly more rugged track through the bush.
Whilst not difficult by any means, the path becomes narrow and rocky and begins to undulate.
After 400m you’ll see a wide rocky ledge on the left which offers a gorgeous view of Tallow Beach and Little Tallow Beach.
It isn’t long before you reach another rocky platform with a slightly obscured view back onto Tallow Beach, but a fantastic and unobstructed view to Box Head. The trail begins to descend as you make your way to the final viewpoint.
From the junction with Tallow Beach to the final lookout at Box Head it’s just 1.2km. The view at the end is fantastic, and would make a great whale watching spot in season.
You can see Ku-ring-gai National Park, Lion Island, Broken Bay and the Barrenjoey Headland. There’s a handily placed bench for sitting and admiring the views.
The walk back to the junction with Tallow Beach heads gradually back up hill, but it’s never very steep.
Onto Tallow Beach
From the junction it’s exactly 1km down to Tallow Beach. It’s an easy walk down, on a wide, stony trail. The only thing I didn’t really like, was that at points the small stones made the trail a bit slippery.
Almost all the tread on my boots has gone, so that could have contributed, but I nearly slipped three times! Other than that it’s a straightforward walk down to the beach with a gentle gradient.
You’ll first reach the campground, which looks like a lovely place to spend the night, but for one fact. The flies. I think it’s a bumper year for flies this year, but it’s easily the most we’ve ever experienced in NSW.
It reminded us of Alice Springs in March when we basically had 100 or so hitchhikers on our back at any one time!
I’m sure it’s worse than it normally would be for whatever reason, but it definitely made stopping for any reason a bit of a pain!
Flies aside the 400m long beach is an absolute beauty. It’s got a lovely secluded vibe and there were just two other people there on our visit, despite it being a sunny Saturday (well it started sunny before it clouded over anyway!)
It’s a great place to take a dip or just relax on the sand.
Onto Little Tallow Beach
Once you’ve had enough soaking up the serenity of Tallow Beach you can head along the sand until you see the path heading up from the beach. After 350m along the path, you’ll see another narrow trail, between the bushes, which leads to Little Tallow Beach.
After 300m on this fairly flat track you’ll cut down onto the rocks and you get a great view back over Tallow Beach.
Following the rock shelf round you’ll come to pretty little Tallow Beach, which is a nice spot to sit and relax.
You can head up the path in front of you, rather than go back on yourself when you’re ready to leave, but beware that it is seldom used!
I went through a ginormous web and then started to push through the narrow bush track before deciding that perhaps heading back along the main trail was preferable - particularly as we saw a snake and soon you could barely see your feet at all, due to the dense vegetation!
Heading back up the main trail to the car park is roughly 750m long and not as much of a slog as I thought it might be when I was coming down the hill. The track is actually pretty gradual so it never really feels very steep.
Overall this is a great walk with some stunning views, a beautiful, quiet beach and if you’re lucky some truly wonderful wildflowers.
Getting to the Box Head Track
It doesn’t look like the journey from Sydney to the Box Head Track is very far but it actually takes over an hour and a half (just over 100km).
The track begins at the gate at the end of Hawke Head Drive. Once you head onto Hawke Head Drive it’s unsealed, and to reach the gate is roughly 2km. The sign says 4WD recommended and whilst you could probably do it in a normal car, it does get a little rough and most of the smaller cars we saw left them near the start of the road and walked up.
There’s a small car park by the gate, but there was plenty of space when we visited, even on a Saturday.
This post may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, that we will earn a small commission if you click through and decide to make a purchase. This helps towards the costs of running our website. Thanks for your support.
Like it? Pin it!
Follow us on Social Media
What’s your favourite walk on the Central Coast? Let us know in the comments below!
