Sunrise

Had to do it once, and as today is the final morning…

 

I do like to be beside the seaside

Despite my best efforts at a lazy start to the day, my family conspired against me. After convincing Elliot that 6:15 was in fact 3am, when he finally worked it out he wanted to spend the next little while proving how clever he was. And that was just one…

Slow starts aside, the sea beckoned. A cold southerly change came roaring through around 9pm last night and so the swim was dealt with rather rapidly. No wonder southerners think the Gold Coast is great. The swim marked a brief punctuation to an otherwise extended breakfast  which continued most of the morning.

A small piece of excitement raised a crowd when a sting ray came into the shallows and prowled amongst the breakers. That served as a brief entree to the main course which came later when three dolphins came in to feed, then played amongst the groups of swimmers close to shore.

It seems my attempts at getting a sleep would be futile, so we segued an extended breakfast into an early lunch. That allowed us to explore up and down the coast a little. This part of the coast has dramatic headlands separated by wide sweeps of beach. We clambered up and down and around a few of them before heading back to camp.

Another swim, and rather more successful this time. The southerly change was producing big seas on the open beaches and around the headlands, but at the camp the beach faces north and so is protected. Once the initial shock of the cold was overcome, it was very pleasant to bob around and catch the occasional wave.

The Road Less Travelled

We went a full 24 hours without seeing another soul or a vehicle. Considering we didn’t manage that during our entire journey across the top end and W.A., and that today we were between Armidale and Port Macquarie, both large centres in their own right and only a little over 100km apart it could be surprising. However, I think it shows just how much, as Australians, we really are focussed on the coast. Tonight we are camped at Point Plomer, around 40km south of Kempsey which is pretty much the midpoint between Brisbane and Sydney and we had to walk up and down the campsite, which apparently has 100 sites, to work out whether we could actually fit.

The woman that sold us the Youdale’s permit said we would have the place to ourselves, and we did. In the bottom of the valley next to Kunderang Brook we only had a possum for company overnight under a cool and clear night.

Again the climb out was thankfully uneventful and we explored the southern extents of the Macleay  Gorge system. The country was quite different from further west, rather more reminiscent of Gibraltar Range which is around 100km further north. The rugged country meant that after around 3 hours on the road we were still only 8km from where we had started on our journey out.

The coarse granite soils had changed into finer red/brown and had it been any wetter we would have had some issues on the steeper sections. It did mean however that the countryside was alive with colour. Not quite in W.A. wildflower league, but a fine display for all of that.

As we dropped down out of the high country behind Kempsey, the temperature rose about 10deg. How much of that was just altitude is hard to say, but the southerly change due here shortly will be welcome.

So tonight we find ourselves in Limeburners Creek National Park at the Point Plomer campground. We were attempting to avoid the crowds that we knew would be at Brooms Head a little further north, but as I hinted above, that didn’t happen. Our neighbours on either side are friendly though, and the kids are currently next to a borrowed campfire.

Our camp is right beside the beach access, a remarkable piece of luck. We are at the southern end of a broad sweep of beach which seems completely unspoilt by any kind of development visible from the sand. I can imagine tomorrow will be a very slow day indeed.

Hard Country

The pioneers in this area were quick to be inspired by the range of possibilities presented by the rolling hills and seemingly endless water. The reality soon showed itself though.

It is hard to find a river in this area that did not have a hydro-electric scheme proposed at some stage or other, but the rugged country made the logistics impossible in each case. The land receives erratic rainfall but the nature of the soils and vegetation means it is soaked like a sponge, to be released slowly into the rivers. The Tia river had it’s longest dry spell of something like 25 days in 1942, and flows more than 25ML a day more than 80% of the time. Combine that with the hundreds of metre drop into the gorge system and it seems to make a compelling argument.

  Pastoral uses seem like an obvious choice. This has been most successful, but the initial attempts were limited by a natural lack of phosphate in the soils leading to poor yields. The introduction of superphosphate as a fertiliser in the middle of last century provided some prosperity, but its use is now limited by the recognition of the general environmental damage it can do. Losing stock into gorge country was also an obvious problem.

And so it was with the area we camp in tonight. Youdale’s hut was on one of a small collection of squatter holdings and selections made through last century in the base of the gorge country. Evidence of the optimism was a farmers solution of the problem of termites eating fence posts, by planting trees along the fence line to act as living posts. The same farmer though could not get a water tank into the steep valley and so had to contend with carting water by hand every day.

These attempts all ultimately failed, and as the leases came up, they were not renewed and the land has slowly accumulated to become the systems of parks and reserves we enjoy today. Perhaps these will continue to grow into the future. On the fringes we travelled through vast tracts of plantation eucalypts, no doubt part of some managed timber production, or perhaps a carbon offset scheme. The number of dead trees in their number may perhaps be a portent of doom for these as well. It is indeed hard country.

However, not so for the travellers. While the heat and the pace was getting to Elliot, we still had a number of waterfalls, gorges, scenic drives and swims to do today. He however, chose not to walk at Tia Falls, opting instead for a sleep later.  That kind of sapped the enthusiasm for the rest of us, so we settled for a relaxing drive to a soundtrack of the Hitchhikers Guide and the philosophy of Douglas Adams.

Youdale’s Hut sits on Kunderang Brook, notable on this journey because it is actually cool enough to be refreshing. We again have the campsite to ourselves, and the picnic tables, firewood and facilities make it all very simple.

 

By the Light of a Silvery Moon

Couldn’t waste such a glorious moon last night. Had to get the light-inventing camera out.

Riverside Apsley

You have to get pretty picky to conclude anything other than that this is a pretty special spot. I’ve just loaded my photos and I thought something was wrong because the first one for the day was dinner. Then I looked back and decided that pretty much since first light this morning we’ve been down paddling in the river.

Ok, so it is hot and there are too many flies, but really, that is as bad as it gets. And the water temp in the river means that it is just a little too warm to be refreshing when you jump in, but it does mean you can be in all day without feeling you have to be active to stay warm.

I I started the morning with a walk upstream and floated down through a couple of sets of rapids before collecting the others at the campsite to continue our way downstream. We traversed several more sets, some of them many times because they were so much fun, before we decided it was really getting too hot in the sun and headed back for lunch.

That’s where the too hot comes in, so after I cooked my pudding for dinner, it was back to the river to find a shady spot to sit out the heat of the day. I must have fallen asleep, as some of my company disappeared and I failed to notice. Anyway, domestic duties beckoned and it was back to the campfire to complete my roast leg of lamb with vegetables, followed by carrot and lemon pudding with custard. How’s that to round out the day?

Couldn’t resist an after-dinner walk to take some photos as we’ll be off again tomorrow for destinations new.