7 July 2012 - Taree Showgrounds, Taree, Manning Valley, NSW

It is a hard life being a sportsman, so my husband keeps tells me, echoing the sentiments of a year ago. What with the Tour de France, Wimbleton and the ensuing Olympics, his television viewing is making for long days; I am ever grateful that he has good headphones. (And as I write this I am informed that the one day cricket match between Australia and England is about to start. Sport rules!?)

Today we set off once more into the mountains, bearing in mind that the word “mountains” generally means something quite different to Australians than New Zealanders who live in a more mountainous country. It is only fifteen kilometres through to Wingham, another town on the Manning River but with only about 5,000 people.

Wingham, settled in 1853, is laid out in the traditional English style centred on the village green and surrounded by Victorian and Federation era buildings. A wander about to see these for ourselves was on the to-do list but for now we pressed on north westwards  toward the tiny rural village of Wherrol Flat and on up into the Tapin Tops National Park via the Dingo Tops Road, passing through the Dingo Tops State Forest. (Interestingly “tapin” is the local aboriginal word for “dingo”.)

Compared with those travelled yesterday, the roads were very good. We climbed up high onto the Great Eastern Escarpment through subtropical rain forest full of lovely black-boys and draping casuarina boughs overhanging the road which reminded me of New Zealand’s Rimu trees. The park covers just less than 11,000 hectares and has only been on the parks’ register since 1999.

 In the mid-1990s this area was the scene of several passionate anti-logging protests as conservationists attempted to stop logging in highly controversial areas. Some sections of the forest were closed and police were called in to protect loggers and their equipment.

Forestry has been part of the landscape for around one hundred years and habits die hard. Today there seems to be a mix of commerce and conservation although the Parks people would like to get their hands on more land for sure.

As yesterday we saw very little wildlife, just one road-killed Parma wallaby (as seen yesterday but now identified). There are spotted quoll lurking in the undergrowth, but they are unlikely to ever show their faces to the likes of us.

We stopped briefly at the Dingo Tops Rest Area to read the interpretative panels and take advantage of the very long long-drop loos. The picnic area is quite lovely and would be even more so on a sunny summer’s day. It was still cold despite approaching midday and of course we were quite elevated. 

Driving on through the mountain mist, we soon arrived at the turn off to Blue Knob Lookout and drove up the even more narrow gravel road to a derelict fire lookout tower situated on the knob at 1,014 metres ASL. We were still quite alone on the road as we had been yesterday as we travelled through the National Park and State Forest.

From the fire tower on Blue Knob Lookout

All about us, except for a narrow ten degree window toward the coast, clouds lay about like a great fluffy skirt. Bird sound rose up out of the obscurity, the Eastern Whipbirds loud and all about like machine gun firing. We sat atop this high point eating our lunch which included the most yummy apple Danish purchased from the French Taste Bakery in Taree and hoping against hope that the cloud would lift before we were finished. We procrastinated by climbing up the shaky ladder to the partly rotten platform but found nothing further of interest and the view unchanged.

Further on we passed out of the Tapin Tops National Park, through the Bulga State Forest and across the southern edge of the Biriwal Bulga National Park, descending steeply on roads seemingly wider if only for the fact the overgrowth had been cut back. As we neared the turnoff for the Ellenborough Falls, now only 390 metres ASL here on the Bulga Plateau, we hit a couple of kilometres of road works, abandoned for the weekend. The road surface was a slippery sludge about six inches deep, treacherous to say the least and reminiscent of a wet clay road we slid off and over a bank many years ago. Fortunately Chris had kept the cruiser in 4WD mode however it was still quite unsettling for this co-driver.

Ellenborough Falls

The Legendary Ellenborough Falls are recorded in various travel literature as being the second longest single drop waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere and sometimes simply as one of the longest, but as I have said before, Australians are keen to claim the superlative with many of their great wonders, and why not? It keeps the likes of us on our toes. The 200 metre drop is a spectacular sight especially after many days of rain. We stood out on the platform from where we could see the water drop from the ledge alongside us far down into the narrow gorge below, and then walked the 700 metres around the side of the gorge to stand on another directly opposite. We then returned and walked down another pathway to the very top of the falls and noted the memorial plaque gracing the platform barrier in memory of “Dove” who at eleven years of age had played too near the edge and fallen to a not so peaceful death in the canyon below; a sound warning to parents to keep their children under control. All three aspects were worth the effort and well worth the mud that now caked over the cruiser, or so I thought. But then it is not I who tries to keep it clean.

There were quite a few family parties at the falls, all of whom had driven directly up from Wingham rather than taking the circuit through the National Park as we had done. The gravel road south was very good even if it had fallen away in many places. There was clear warning of each of the single lane passes and soon we were on seal and passing through the lovely farmland of Bobin and Marlee.

When we arrived once more in Wingham, it was only mid-afternoon so we decided to take in the Wingham Brush Nature Reserve, a seven hectare subtropical lowland rainforest, apparently one of the few remnants of this type of rainforest left in Australia. The Brush is home, or at least the roosting and maternity site, for grey-headed flying foxes, with the population peaking at over 200,000 (40% of the total population). I do wonder how they manage to come up with such statistics; perhaps it is worked out on level of noise and smell? As we walked on through the reserve, we heard and smelt the flying foxes before we spotted the first of them hanging upside down high in the trees.

They are marvellous creatures and each time I come upon them, my fascination does not diminish. They are native mammals that have adapted for life in the forest canopy, roosting by day and flying out at night to feed wherever they can find trees producing nectar, pollen rich flowers and succulent native fruits. Guided in the dark by their excellent eyesight and sense of smell, they forage for up to forty kilometres from their roost.

Interestingly every time I have seen them, usually in the afternoon when you would expect them to be resting in readiness for the night’s work, they are restless and noisy, just like a dormitory full of school girls down for the Sunday afternoon nap, if my memory does not fail me.

Standing by the old Manning wharf

Apart from the mass of hanging cuties, the brush turkeys were busy on the ground building nests. They too are an interesting bird, laying their eggs in large nests made of leaves or earth, one to one and a half metres high and up to four metres wide. The male, who sports a very smart yellow wattle in contrast to his mate who simply has a red head and black burka, is kept very busy as the eggs incubate. It is he and he alone who takes care of the un-hatched young, and given that he may have three or more nests on the go, he spends most of his days rushing from one nest to another checking that all is well, regulating the temperature by adding or removing material in an effort to maintain the temperature of the mound in the 33 to 35 degree incubation temperature range. This he does by sticking his beak into the mound and then busies himself with scratching that would put a bulldozer to shame. This you can imagine makes for comical viewing by us humans. Thus is the penalty for having more than one wife!

Leaving the flying foxes and the brush turkeys to their business of survival, we wandered on down to the Manning River onto the historic wharf, which was first used by timber carrying vessels in the 1830s. By the end of the century, agricultural and dairying produce were exported from this wharf and today it has become a popular picnic spot. We stood for a while on the river edge taking in the serenity and pondering the possibility of fishing, however decided that the fishing rod is still best left in its wrapping.

The temperature was starting to drop as it does at this time of the year, so we headed home and settled in for another night of action on the box, after Chris had washed the mud off the car and I had made a token effort at assisting him with dinner.