Ferndale Park is located in suburban , from the centre of

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. It is an important

urban forest An urban forest is a forest, or a collection of trees, that grow within a city, town or a suburb. In a wider sense, it may include any kind of woody plant vegetation growing in and around human settlements. As opposed to a forest park, whose eco ...

reserve, preserving Blackbutt forest and the mossy gully

rainforest Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainfores ...

. Most of this original forest was cleared for agriculture and housing in the 19th and 20th century.

Geography

Average annual rainfall is at the nearby Chatswood Bowling Club. Soils are moderately fertile, based on

Hawkesbury sandstone Sydney sandstone is the common name for Sydney Basin Hawkesbury Sandstone, one variety of which is historically known as Yellowblock, and also as "yellow gold" a sedimentary rock named after the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, where this ...

and

Ashfield Shale Ashfield Shale is part of the Wianamatta group of sedimentary rocks in the Sydney Basin. It lies directly on contemporaneously eroded Hawkesbury sandstone or the Mittagong formation. These rock types were formed in the Triassic Period. It is nam ...

. Most of the reserve is considered part of the

Sydney Sandstone Gully Forest The Southern Sydney sheltered forest, or the Sydney Sandstone Gully Forest (SSGF), is a vegetation community found in Sydney, Australia that comprises an open forest composition grading into woodland or scrub, typically within gullies. The commu ...

History

The local

indigenous Australian people Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

, the

Cammeraygal The Cammeraygal, variously spelled as Cam-mer-ray-gal, Gamaraigal, Kameraigal, Cameragal and several other variations, are one clan of the 29 Darug tribes who are united by a common language, strong ties of kinship and survived as skilled hunte ...

occupied this area for at least 5,800 years. They were known to shelter in "Old Man's Cave" in heatwaves or heavy rain.

Recreation

Ferndale Park has a series of walking tracks. Office workers from Chatswood may be seen jogging through the reserve at lunchtime and after work.

Flora

Noteworthy indigenous flora includes the blackbutt,

tree heath ''Erica arborea'', the tree heath or tree heather, is a species of flowering plant (angiosperms) in the heather family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean Basin and Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa. It is also cultivated as an or ...

, celery wood,

coachwood ''Ceratopetalum apetalum'', the coachwood, scented satinwood or tarwood, is a medium-sized hardwood tree, straight-growing with smooth, fragrant, greyish bark. It is native to eastern Australia in the central and northern coastal rainforests of ...

, native crabapple and hard corkwood. An impressive number of fern species grow here, including jungle brake, fishbone water fern,

filmy fern The Hymenophyllaceae, the filmy ferns and bristle ferns, are a family of two to nine genera (depending on classification system) and about 650 known species of ferns, with a cosmopolitan distribution, subcosmopolitan distribution, but generally r ...

, Japanese lady fern, delicate rock fern and the necklace fern. The green cliff brake is an invasive fern species. The

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...

dwarf finger fern grows on sandstone cliffs. In winter, waxcap mushroom species in the

Hygrophoraceae The Hygrophoraceae are a family of fungi in the order Agaricales. Originally conceived as containing white-spored, thick-gilled agarics (gilled mushrooms), including ''Hygrophorus'' and ''Hygrocybe'' species (the waxcaps or waxy caps), DNA evide ...

may be seen.

Fauna

Ring-tail possums,

brushtail possum The brushtail possums are the members of the genus ''Trichosurus'' in the Phalangeridae, a family of marsupials. They are native to Australia (including Tasmania) and some small nearby islands. Unique among marsupials, they have shifted the hypax ...

s and

grey-headed flying fox The grey-headed flying fox (''Pteropus poliocephalus'') is a megabat native to Australia. The species shares mainland Australia with three other members of the genus ''Pteropus'': the little red ''Pteropus scapulatus, P. scapulatus'', spectacle ...

es are common. Birds such as brushturkeys,

rainbow lorikeet The rainbow lorikeet (''Trichoglossus moluccanus'') is a species of parrot found in Australia. It is common along the eastern seaboard, from northern Queensland to South Australia. Its habitat is rainforest, coastal bush and woodland areas. Six ...

Australian king parrot The Australian king parrot (''Alisterus scapularis'') is a species of parrot endemic to eastern Australia ranging from Cooktown in Queensland to Port Campbell in Victoria. Found in humid and heavily forested upland regions of the eastern portion ...

crimson rosella The crimson rosella (''Platycercus elegans'') is a parrot native to eastern and south eastern Australia which has been introduced to New Zealand and Norfolk Island. It is commonly found in, but not restricted to, mountain forests and gardens. The ...

currawong Currawongs are three species of medium-sized passerine birds belonging to the genus ''Strepera'' in the family Artamidae native to Australia. These are the grey currawong (''Strepera versicolor''), pied currawong (''S. graculina''), and black cu ...

owlet-nightjar Owlet-nightjars are small crepuscular birds related to the nightjars and frogmouths. Most are native to New Guinea, but some species extend to Australia, the Moluccas, and New Caledonia. A flightless species from New Zealand is extinct. There is ...

koel The true koels, ''Eudynamys'', are a genus of cuckoos from Asia, Australia and the Pacific. They are large sexually dimorphic cuckoos that eat fruits and insects and have loud distinctive calls. They are brood parasites, laying their eggs in ...

tawny frogmouth The tawny frogmouth (''Podargus strigoides'') is a species of frogmouth native to the Australian mainland and Tasmania and found throughout. It is a big-headed, stocky bird, often mistaken for an owl, due to its nocturnal habits and similar colour ...

pacific baza The Pacific baza (''Aviceda subcristata''), also known as the crested hawk, crested baza, and Pacific cuckoo-falcon, is a slender, medium-sized species of hawk in the family Accipitridae. It is mostly grey, brown, and white coloured and grows t ...

and

powerful owl The powerful owl (''Ninox strenua''), a species of owl native to south-eastern and eastern Australia, is the largest owl on the continent. It is found in coastal areas and in the Great Dividing Range, rarely more than inland. The IUCNRed List ...

are some of the many found in the park.

Microbat Microbats constitute the suborder Microchiroptera within the order Chiroptera (bats). Bats have long been differentiated into Megachiroptera (megabats) and Microchiroptera, based on their size, the use of echolocation by the Microchiroptera a ...

s are present, including

Gould's wattled bat Gould's wattled bat (''Chalinolobus gouldii'') is a species of Australian wattled bat named after the English naturalist John Gould.Chruszcz, Bryan & Barclay, M. R. (2002)''Mammalian Species'' Chalinolobus gouldii The American Society of Mammal ...

Lesser long-eared bat ''Nyctophilus geoffroyi'' is a vespertilionid bat, a flying nocturnal mammal found in Australia, The species is relatively common. They have been referred to as the lesser long-eared bat. Taxonomy It is the type species of genus ''Nyctophilus''. ...

and the Little Forest Bat. Many species of spider and other invertebrates live in the reserve. The Emerald Spotted Frog is known to occur.

North Shore Times The ''North Shore Times'' is an Australian local newspaper, serving the local government areas of Willoughby, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove and part of North Sydney. Like the ''Northern District Times'', the paper is one of News Limited's community ...

, 17 July 2015 page 21 An important remnant

marsupial Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a po ...

is the

sugar glider The sugar glider (''Petaurus breviceps'') is a small, omnivorous, arboreal, and nocturnal gliding possum belonging to the marsupial infraclass. The common name refers to its predilection for sugary foods such as sap and nectar and its ability ...

.Ferndale Walking Track pamphlet, City of Willoughby

Bush regeneration

Forest conservation work is in progress. The weeds

trad Trad. is often an abbreviation of the word "traditional". It may also refer to: Music *Trad jazz, a style of jazz music in the 1950s and 1960s *Néo-trad, a musical style that arose in Quebec around the turn of the 21st century *Irish traditional m ...

and

privet A privet is a flowering plant in the genus ''Ligustrum''. The genus contains about 50 species of erect, deciduous or evergreen shrubs, sometimes forming small or medium-sized trees, native species, native to Europe, north Africa, Asia, many in ...

being particularly troublesome. The shady areas form excellent habitats for fungi and rainforest plants, but disturbed areas are suited to invasive weeds.

References

{{Parks in Sydney, state=autocollapse Parks in New South Wales Forests of New South Wales Geography of Sydney