Running and Hiking Around Kiwarrak: A Local's Guide

The heatmap for this area, accumulated over five years of regular running, is essentially a solid red blot. About 20,000 kilometres of routes fanning out from Koorainghat through forest, along fire trails, down to the beach, up to the river and back. There's a lot to run here.

That's not an accident of geography. The mid-north coast around Old Bar and Kiwarrak sits in a particular sweet spot: state forest and national park immediately to hand, beach ten minutes east, river flats to the north, and enough road and trail variety to keep a serious runner occupied across years without repeating the same route twice in the same week.

Forest trails

Kiwarrak State Forest starts at the property boundary. The fire trail network inside the forest covers extensive ground — flat to gently rolling on the main spines, with some genuine climbs if you want to find the ridgeline sections. The trails are unsealed management roads mostly, which means good footing in dry conditions, and the canopy keeps them runnable in the middle of a hot day when beach running gets uncomfortable.

The Kiwarrak Mountain Bike Park trails share some of this network, and running the singletrack sections in the early morning — before the MTB crowd arrives — is its own particular pleasure. The forest is quiet in a way that takes a few minutes to properly absorb.

Khappinghat National Park

Immediately to the north of the property, Khappinghat National Park — the name translates from Gathang as "having honey" — offers a different character again: more closed-in, more varied terrain, with the creek valleys and the kind of old-growth coastal forest that feels genuinely undisturbed. Not all of it is easy to navigate without local knowledge, but the main access tracks are well-established and run to the creek and back without complication.

Old Bar Beach

Ten to fifteen minutes by car. The beach here is long, straight, and firm-packed at low tide — the kind of surface that's actually good to run on, not the soft, ankle-turning sand that makes beach running a chore. Early mornings in winter are extraordinary: empty beach, cold light, the Pacific doing whatever it's doing that day.

The Old Bar to Wallabi Point stretch gives you several kilometres of uninterrupted coastline, and connecting back via the headland track turns it into a proper loop with some elevation. Saltwater National Park and Khappinghat Nature Reserve extend the southern coastal options further.

The river flats

Head north toward the Manning River and the terrain opens right out. Flat roads through farming country, river views, quiet enough that you're more likely to see a heron than a car. Good for long easy efforts or as a recovery run contrast to the forest climbs.

What to expect

The trail network here handles serious distance. A hundred-kilometre week is entirely achievable without repetition, using a mix of forest, beach and road. Trail runners doing long run days will find the fire trail network sustains 30km+ routes without much planning. Walkers and hikers have similarly varied options — the same routes, slower, with more time to pay attention to what's actually in the forest.

There's no trail running club based here, no organised park run, no crowds. You'll share the trails occasionally with mountain bikers and sometimes see other runners on the beach. Mostly, you have it to yourself.

Four hours from Sydney. Right here.