Apsley Gorge

Apsley Falls

We left Nambucca Heads this morning after three nice days on the beach, and drove into the tablelands area of North Central New South Wales.  We exited from the Pacific Highway and headed west at the sign which said “Wauchope”.  That wasn’t the best decision, as we would better have gone a few more kilometres south before turning off.  The road was paved, but very narrow and rough.  About 10 km along the road we came to a low railroad overpass.  The height was only 3.1 m, and we are taller than that.  There was a bypass that was about 4 m high, but it was flooded and we really couldn’t tell how deep it was, or what the bottom was like, so Enid waded through.  It was a bit muddy, but not too deep, just up to her mid-calf, so I drove through.  There was a very sharp drop off right at the start which really jarred the motorhome, but the bottom was solid so we got through.

We started to climb over the Great Dividing Range not too far west of Wauchope, and then the road became very steep and twisting with many hairpin turns.  Most of the turns were signed for 35 km/h or less.  We followed a car and caravan for a long way, but a fair number of cars started to collect behind us, so I pulled off into a pullout and let them by.  The caravan did the same later on, and we passed it when it did so.

We climbed to over 1200 m from sea level this morning, and then started to descend slightly, but stayed close to 1000 m on the interior plateau.  The scenery is very beautiful.  When starting to climb there is a spectacular view out over the valley far below.  Unfortunately there are almost no places where one could stop to view it as the road is so narrow, and there are very few pullouts.  All along the way up we drove through great forests of towering eucalyptus trees.   We saw a number of red and blue parrots. Once over the summit the country opens up into open fields, and herds of cattle and sheep.  We stopped to take a picture and the air smelled of fresh grass and clover.

We stopped just after two p.m. at the Apsley Gorge campground in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park.  When we arrived we were the only ones here, but just shortly after the car and caravan pulled in that we’d passed earlier today.  There was one man alone, and he hollered across to us, “are you from Canada,” as he’d seen our flag in the back window when we passed him.  As we talked to him he said he’d been in Canada this summer, and we asked him where.

 “Saskatchewan,” he replied, and on further talking to him he mentioned Rosetown.  Enid said she’d grown up near there, and as we talked we found that he’d actually been living in Fiske for a few months in 2009 with his ex-partner.  It was quite a coincidence to find someone with that connection in such an isolated spot here in the Australian outback.

There is a spectacular gorge at this campgrounds with a drop of at least 100 m straight down into a narrow canyon.  The River plunges into the gorge over a waterfall, and there is a good trail along the gorge and to viewing sites for the falls.  Normally there is a bridge across the river and a trail on the other side as well, but it was washed out by the floods through here over the last couple of weeks.

While walking along the gorge we saw a number of kangaroos, and many different kinds of flowers.  I was stopping to photograph the flowers when I felt a sharp pain on both sides of my ankle.  I looked down and saw two black wasps, one on each side.  Though I killed them, they stung me badly and my ankle burned for a long time.  Then just a few hundred metres further I stopped again, and again was stung on the same ankle, this time in front.  I don’t know how I stirred them up, but my ankle stung for well over an hour.