Epic Sunset Views & Hiking at Mt Majura

3/05/2018

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3/05/2018

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When you’re in the nation’s capital, your Saturday night can be its very own microadventure and you don’t even have to leave the city. Mt Majura is just one of four cityside mountains that will give you a quick hike to a pretty special dinnertime picnic spot complete with epic sunset views over Canberra.

Quick Overview

Mt Majura trail is a 3 km, grade 1 hike located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. The hike should take around 4 hours to complete.

Highlights

Sweeping city views
Mountain views (which may include friendly kangaroos)
Empty trails
Saturday night adventure in under 4 hours
Moderate/easy hike

The Lowdown

Canberra sits in the heart of Ngunnawal country and is fully rich in culture and outdoor adventure.

Within 10km of the city centre, a short UBER, drive or bike ride away, you can find yourself at the bottom of any one of Canberra’s four closest nature reserves: Red Hill, Mt Painter, Mt Ainslie and the star of this story, Mt Majura.

Each of these local mountains would be an incredible setting for your very own Saturday night microadventure in the city.

Explore our nation’s bush capital: More Canberra & ACT Microadventures

Mt Majura

Mt Majura stands at 890m and is the highest of the four peaks. We chose to walk by way of the Casuarina Trail, a 3.8km walking trail that will take you about 2 hours to complete. As this was to be the most micro of adventures, we chose to access the trail from the Antill St carpark and hike a reasonably short 1.5km up and down the same tracks, rather than completing the loop.

The trail takes you through beautiful bushland and makes up some of the region’s Centenary Trail, a 145km walking and cycling loop around the region.

The Casuarina Trail is a mix of access roads, single track and stepped sections, leading to the top of the ridge. From the saddle, you are rewarded with impressive views across the city, so there’s no need to walk any further!

Along this trail, you’re unlikely to encounter many people and, once we stopped at the top, we didn’t see a soul; well, apart from a couple of friendly local kangaroos.

A couple of metres off the trail, we slung up our hammock to a couple of sturdy trees, cracked open a cold one, and relaxed into our own slice of Saturday night paradise.

Essential Gear

In order to have a proper Saturday night hike, it’s important to remember the essentials:

When you are hiking to the summit of a mountain for sunset, you don’t want to be messing around preparing food at the top, so pack your food into your mess tins and wrap it in a tea towel to keep warm.
Bring cutlery – unfortunately we weren’t able to enjoy our home-cooked curry at the top as we forgot this all-important item. But hey, we learn from experience right?
Drinks – we didn’t mess around here, bringing tins of local craft beer from the good folk at Capital Brewing Co. No bottle opener to forget here!
A hammock – because, well, why not! Name an adventure where bringing a hammock along didn’t make it a whole lot better!
A torch – again, another item that we wished we’d brought with us for the descent back down the mountain!

How To Get There

From the city centre, head north to the Mount Majura Nature Reserve carpark at the far end of Hackett, on Antill St. The carpark is on your right, opposite No.321 Antill St.