17 July 2012 - Dangar Falls Lodge & Camping, Dorrigo, NSW

Today was the day on which to carry out the trip we had left the eastern coastal highway for and so we were delighted to wake to yet another frost, bizarre as that sounds. Of course the frost heralded a clear sky and a delayed arrival of the forecasted clouds or scattered showers. Forever the optimist, I could have said to Chris, “I told you so”, but did not. Instead we simply headed into Dorrigo, purchased our copy of The Australian before they were all sold out (with the establishment of online media, the newsagents seem to stock fewer and fewer copies as the months pass by).

The Waterfall Way is the sealed highway that connects the university capital of New England, Armadale, with the Pacific coast, a road we had erroneously thought to be a challenge for a heavy rig. Not so; we had done the worst the day before yesterday when we hauled the caravan up here to Dorrigo. But then we have left the last sixty or seventy kilometres untraveled so perhaps they are the most challenging? Perhaps we will never find out?

The land on the outskirts of Dorrigo support dairy farming, but further west the pastoral farming seems limited to beef except for one sheep farm along the route. We passed a bucket of daffodils on the roadside, offered for sale, then soon after a paddock of ewes with quite a few new lambs. Hopefully the weather between now and the end of August will be conducive to their survival here on the elevated New England plateau. In my mind daffodils and new lambs mark the beginning of spring, but surely this is too early?

Falls on the Guy Fawkes River

Despite the name of the route suggesting a multitude of waterfalls, they are scattered some distance from one another. The first of the day was forty six kilometres west of Dorrigo at Ebor on the narrow southern tongue of the Guy Fawkes River National Park, situated not surprisingly on the Guy Fawkes River. These spectacular falls are two tiered, the top fall quite wonderful all by itself. A short walk along the edge of the canyon brings one to a point where the lower falls come into view still offering views of the upper fall. In fact the river continues on its way rushing and tumbling, further cascading downstream over rocks before disappearing into the eucalypt forest on the valley floor. We both agreed that these were quite lovely.

The very small village of Ebor is situated at 1,300 metres ASL, nearly double the altitude of Dorrigo; this explained the cooler temperature and we were feeling every bit of it!

About 11 kilometres further south west, we turned off and travelled in the opposite direction, into the New England National Park, most of the sixteen kilometres on gravel road, to Point Lookout. At 1,564 kilometres ASL, right on the edge of the Great Escarpment, yet again, we looked down the near vertical drop to deep forested valleys below and out on the panorama stretching to the north, east and south seventy kilometres away.

After taking in the view, we enjoyed a cup of coffee in the shelter, intruding into the clean-up of a meeting of outdoor centre teachers. The twenty teachers and head masters from near and far had moved to the next place on the agenda but the administrative manager / dogs-body of a local education centre was packing up uneaten cupcakes, plates of fresh fruit salad and dirty coffee cups. 

By her own account, this young woman was an excellent example of competent multi-taskers in the work force; a qualified and experienced chef, wife of another chef, a mother, a carer of lizards and other wildlife housed at any one time at the centre and last of all, an administration manager. We chatted for some time and then let her to get on with her work in peace and proceeded to the Banksia Lookout back down the road. We lunched early and then set off on a walk down and along the cliffs of the escarpment to the Weeping Rock. The track was wet and steep through old Antarctic beeches draped with moss, tree ferns and a wealth of other rain forest flora, following the base of the great rock face which dipped water down over the creepers and us. We reached the Weeping Rock after scaling an even wetter face, and agreed that it was really very beautiful and would stand out as one of our better walks, even though it took no more than half an hour to go there and back to the vehicle.

From here, we retraced our route, back through Ebor, but then turned off the Waterfall Way, travelling twenty kilometres north through the lovely farmland around Hernani toward Tyringham, then turning eastwards  and travelling through a series of gullies and over ridges, passing through Bostobrick which seems to be popular with landholders who appear to husband wilderness rather than economic crops or animals, and then meandering through the rolling hills, dairy farms and potato paddocks of North Dorrigo.

As we approached Dorrigo, we noted a mass of rail carriages below us. Our map showed there was a Steam Rail Museum here and then I noted the rail line marked on the same map that simply stopped at Dorrigo. Needless to say, the rail operates no more and given that we were unable to find any entry point to the museum, it seems to have gone the same way. However there are hundreds of passenger carriages lined up, one after another, slowly being absorbed into the landscape. A number of very black steam engines and other rolling stock also fill the space that was once a working railway yard; soon the vines and trees will cover it all. Perhaps one day there will be a cycling rail trail running north from here?

In Dorrigo, we hunted down some authentic Dorrego spuds which look promising now I have washed and stored them. On our return to the camp, Chris washed the rig in readiness for our departure tomorrow morning, finishing just before Farmer Bill arrived to check all was well. Hopefully he did not notice the windscreen wipers still standing out from the windscreen and evidence of our furtive and extravagant water use. There are no official restrictions on the use of water, it is just that one is only too aware in this country that water is often scarce and always treated with great respect.