Cotter Dam Discovery Trail, Canberra, Australia

During the summer vacation in 2024, we visited Cotter Dam, which is a major water source for the Australian capital, Canberra.

 

This walking trail is an interesting experience, so we, the Garran community residents, decided to visit this place and asked everyone to bring at least one dish so we could experience different tastes from different countries.

Our purpose was to visit the Cotter Dam and its surrounding areas, especially the Cotter Band, which is a popular walking trail, and we engaged a lady guide who took us, telling us all about the dam and its history and showing us its popular points.

 
We all gathered at this point at about 9 am, but the lady came at 10 as per the schedule. In the meantime, we had our breakfast that we had brought from home, one dish for each family as agreed in advance.

So we decided to have fun

We started our walk this way

But this was an option too however, these walks are considered tough so we selected the easy ones.

 
For your information, in Canberra, people from 80 countries have settled and gather on each other's festivals.

As I kept reading the different brochures available in different information centers, I learned that this dam is located on the Cotter River in the Australian Capital.

Indeed, it serves and supplies the water to the city and is being enlarged as the demand for water increases, although Canberra remains more or less a low-populated city.

Cotter Band is one of the most visited areas in this area, where people come every week, and it becomes a little crowded as per Australian standards during the summer. People that visit this place jump into the water, as most Australians love water and leave no such opportunity.

The lady guide was right in front, telling us all about Cotter Dam Trail, and for sure we learned about the history of the dam and how the water is provided in Canberra as we walked and listened to her.

The lady was guiding us properly

It's not only an ideal picnic area for family gatherings but also one of the best places for outings and having some chat while sitting on the vast spread lawns.

 
Undoubtedly we enjoyed a picnic close to European deciduous trees and watched the kids enjoying the water and the playground.

Our walk started at this point as we walked on Cotter Avenue.

 
People come from distant places to Canberra for its wonderful walking paths, and one of them is "Cotter Avenue" and then to "Cotter Bend."

People engage in all fun activities like walking, jogging, biking, motorbiking, and running from Canberra to Cotter Avenue to Cotter Bend.

I am interested in local plants, so I left no opportunity and clicked on plants! I found different species of Pomaderris.

People do it in various ways, but we drove with two children from the community as we were planning it for long, but I missed it during my last visit to Canberra in 2020 due to a big bushfire.

I wanted to do Cotter Avenue, as there are a number of walking opportunities in this area, but I grabbed the opportunity when the offer came from Garran community initiator, a lady from Israel but settled in Canberra for the last couple of years.

Once we crossed the first bridge, we saw different options, but our lady guide asked us to cross a small bridge.

 
I was amused to see this part is where the people hang out the most.

This bridge close to the dam takes you into the main Cotter Bend area.

We decided to have a dip here as it was too fresh for our liking.

There were beautiful trees along the water stream.

We kept on going, and we saw in the end they all joined. At this point, we could walk further to make a full loop, but as I said, we had kids with us, so we decided to end it here and parted ways and came where our car was parked.

The dam was named after early settler Garrett Cotter.

Look at the Cotter Dam. It is 53 meters high now, but they plan to increase it up to 80 meters.

During the walk, I took this picture of the Cotter River that was way below where I was standing.

Someone took my picture at this point and forwarded it to me.

The total walk along the Cotter River through the fabulous face in the cliff is about 15 km, but we had children with us, so we walked about 10 km and skipped some parts of the trail.

The dam was built in 1915 and has been enlarged just twice until now in more than 100 years.

The Cotter Dam is the main source of Canberra's water supply.

The place is full of big lizards.

Cotter Dam is popular for outdoor recreation, especially walking, swimming, and fishing, besides other water sports.

What I loved most was walking trails, picnics, and of course, photography. I took about 200 pictures, but I am posting about 25+ here.

We picked up our chairs and other belongings and started back. But I can tell you we had a lot of fun.

*There is no ticket or charges for anything.

*As usual in Australian picnic spots, this place provides electric barbecues, picnic tables, a shelter, and toilets.

*We hired a guide for four hours on a collective basis for AU$250, but that is not mandatory.

*Cotter Dam distance from Canberra: 20 km.

*There are no shops in the area so bring your own food.

*Google Map Location from Canberra

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