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| June 06-08, 2003 - Armidale Bushwalks and Skies |
| Written by Anthony Cornelius | ||
| Sunday, 21 September 2008 00:00 | ||
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Please don't use these images without permission! Please email me first. Click here for more information about using or purchasing photos. One of my favourite things about Australia is the extreme diversity of the countryside and scenery. You can travel just a couple of hours and see scenery that you’d associate with all parts of the world! Mid-western US, Europe, tropics…you name it! Even the fact that sometimes you’ll be walking along in a flat area and then come across a gorge that drops over 200m…just amazing! I had three days off and was excited about the opportunity of exploring the Northern Tablelands region (in particular around Armidale), on the annual “ASWA SDS Retreat.” It was only going to be a small affair this year…but it ended up working well! A friend of mine (Mike) was going to meet up with me at my place just after 9 and we were going to head down to Tenterfield from there. I had to meet up with Michael Bath about some ASWA things, so we decided to make a day of it and grab some fish and chips for lunch. Rodney always raved about the Tenterfield Fish and Chip shop…I am normally quite fussy on fish and chips but I can say it certainly gets my vote for being some of the best I’ve ever tasted!!! After lunch, MB and Rodney were going to go to Bald Rock National Park, we decided to join them and do some exploring. It’s just NE of Tenterfield, you get up quite high too…1000-1100m by road. There are two ways to climb the summit…steep, short way and the longer, less steep way. It was a lovely walk up to the top…quite steep still in many sections, although we saw the occasional rock wallaby (?) which were quite cute! They were relatively tame too. Getting up to the top was quite strenuous! Nice steep rocky face to climb up, didn’t want to fall as it was a looong way down :) But the views!!! Absolutely stunning!!! The summit was 1273m and you look out onto other rocky platforms below…it was just beautiful, almost gave you goosebumps with the view. We were in a hurry (we had to get back down before it got dark!) So I only took some quick photos so didn’t have time to compose too much…I’d like to climb it again and camp on the summit overnight so I can get the rocks in a golden sunset glow…would look very nice!
Two more photos are here and here. We climbed back down the steep way…it was VERY steep, you nearly had to climb down backwards in some areas. It was just lots of very little, slow steps…I felt like a truck going down the range! You wanted to go faster, but you had to keep yourself in “low gear” so you didn’t go down too fast and lose control! :) The sun was setting as we got down to the bottom, then headed back to Tenterfield where we both parted. It was only a short drive (around 2 hours) to Armidale from Tent…it was certainly quite cold coming into the outskirts of Armidale (dipped down to 1C at 7:20pm!) We checked into a budget motel (for 2 nights) and then headed off for some steakage at the local RSL ($15 gets you a good meal! Been there a few times, certainly not bad for the price. Only having a few hours sleep the night before (and for much of the weeks before that…don’t you love exams???) I was rather tired…I think I drifted off to sleep while watching Waterboy…I remember checking the temp just after 10pm and it was already -0.9C! I was expecting a big frost, and hence set the alarm for 6am. I got up at around 5:30 in anticipation of a nice big negative figure…+2.3C!!! What was going on here! I stirred for a bit and then when the alarm went off at 6am checked again…+2.7C!!! It was getting worse and worse. Mike wanted to sleep in so I trundled off in search of some frost. I put on a ski jacket then jumped into the car and decided to head east. The temperature on the car was registering 4C, but by the time I got to east Armidale 5 minutes later it was already 0C with a nice frosty covering on the ground! I continued east along Waterfall Way for about 15 minutes or so, the temperature was fluctuating around -1 to -3C for most of the way. I ended up taking a dirt side road, I wanted to find a location to take some sunrise photos given the high cloud to the east. Like clockwork it gave a beautiful display of colour, with a plane flying just in front giving a lovely contrail to add to the picture!
My hands were absolutely freezing…the temperature had dropped to -4C on the car thermo, and the metal on the tripod was virtually sucking every joule of heat out of my hands! I ended up bailing back into the car after sunrise (disappointed I couldn’t get a shed to turn out how I wanted in the sunrise…I need to get a graduated filter! That’s on the “to buy” list…along with 500 other things!!) But the magnificent frosty fields after that made up for it…I liked the way the sun gave a lovely golden glow on some trees just above a patch of frosty grass. Was quite pretty…and the countrysides all had a white covering over them! It looked quite surreal actually…I’m not used to such extensive frosts!
One of the floodways still had water flowing over it and it had frozen over! It was slippery to walk on…the stream that was flowing near it had a thick layer of ice on the top. It was quite an effort to break the top layer of ice…I ended up cutting my hand after putting my fist through it! I guess it was somewhat analogous to smashing your hand through a thin pane of glass. Needless to say, my naïve “warm blooded” Queenslander attitude shone through once again…playing in water and ice in what now were -6C temperatures perhaps was not the most intelligent thing to do as my hands started going numb and blue! I jumped back into the car and held them up to the heater…it was a heavenly feeling having the warmth come back to them! One of the creeks I came across closer to Armidale was lovely and frosty on the sides, and looked quite pretty. I nearly got run over by some fool in a car who was doing 80-90 in a 50 zone on the single lane bridge…he beeped at me and I literally had to jump off the bridge nearly into the creek as he came flying around a nearby corner!
One thing that amazed me about Armidale was the amount of smoke! It looked like fog, but all you had to do was breathe (or try to) and you’d learn very quickly that it was smoke! It blanketed the town in the morning…perhaps it’s a communal thing to help create a “mini-greenhouse” to warm the town??? <g> If so, it worked given it’s a lot warmer in the town than the surroundings! Oh, I liked the bus hotel too!!
I got back around 8am and then sifted through some photos before recharging the batteries and going for a walk around the block. Of course, the “block” was much larger than I anticipated so it took about 50 minutes! Not that it mattered though…Mike didn’t get up until well after 9. We headed off to the tourist info place to get some guides/maps on the local area. Dann Weatherhead was driving up from Sydney and was going to be in Armidale around 1ish. We decided to head towards Dangars Falls and spend the rest of the morning there while waiting for Dann. The falls are about 120m high, they were pretty impressive! I took a few photos before doing a couple of the walks. We walked around to the other side of the gorge where you see the falls from another angle on a large platform. From this angle it looked very “Jurassic Park” like! I could very much imagine a helicopter descending into the narrow, circular gorge with the pool of water below!
We visited Bakers Falls falls briefly (comment of the day by me… “Is that a road or a walking track?” It shows my faith in NSW roads!!) Before searching for a nice place to take some sunset photos…the sun descended low on the horizon giving a nice golden glow over the landscape.
That was before it shone across a field of Altocumulus yielding a spectacular sunset display! Certainly one of the best I’ve seen, it was just awesome!
We headed back to Armidale in the evening and then went out for Chinese – Mun Hing restaurant (I’ve been to it before and it wasn’t too bad…not the ritz if you want something authentic, but it sure tastes good which is the main thing!!) We then had to stop by at the supermarket (Coles is open until midnight in Armidale!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We don’t even get that in Brisbane!!!) Dann and I played around with some of the footballs while Mike went off to find some milk…they umm…sorta got lost, we think they ended up rolling down a few aisles away…never leave kids (especially adult ones) unattended in the shops! We drove back to the motel and watched some storm/chase footage from the past year that evening before calling it a night. I set the alarm for just after 6…it was 5C when we got up! Way too warm for frost, but I went outside and spied a nice bank of Altocumulus still persisting to the east – woohoo!!! I dragged everyone out of bed and then headed east just outside of Armidale before going down another side road. I really wanted to get a sunrise reflecting on the water…Dann pointed out a dam a few hundred metres off the road. Quickly followed by the fact “you have a 4WD we don’t need to walk there” – so we drove over the field and parked next to the dam, just as the sky was getting some colour to it! To add even more to the scene, there were some dead trees beside it…absolutely awesome!!!
I was quite excited about how they’d turn out, because it was absolutely breathtaking to watch…best thing was, it wasn’t even cold! (Well, it was 4C…still 10C warmer than the previous morning!) We had to head back to Armidale and grab some breakfast and stuff before getting an early start.
We were going to go to Cathedral Rock, but it suggested a 5 hour return trip…given it was almost overcast, we decided against it…it would have been an awesome walk but we didn’t want to get to the top only have a hazy, overcast view. There were plenty of other walks to do, so we went to New England National Park and went up to Point Lookout (1594m!) The views…beyond words!!!!!! Even in the cloud and haze they were nothing short of spectacular!
We also did the weeping rock and banksia walks…the weeping rock was especially cool. It was so lush, mossy and green underneath…it made it feel odd because it was scenery you expected to see in Cairns and here we were shivering in 8C temperatures at midday! Next on the agenda were Ebor Falls…probably the prettiest of the lot that we saw! It also helped that the sun came out for about 30 minutes while we were there, which gave better contrast than all of the other falls!
We walked to the lower branch of the falls too (you can drive there, but walking is more fun and rewarding), also you walk along the periphery of the escarpment so the views down below into the gorge are once again (as with everything that we saw!) spectacular.
We headed back to Wollomombi Falls as it was brighter than the day before…we grabbed lunch at a nearby store before eating it watching the Falls…I took a couple of more snaps of it, but it’s another place I have to visit in the future! I drove back to Armidale to drop Dann off at around 2:45 before parting for another eyar (until the ASWA AGM anyway). Too bad there wasn’t more time, but I had to start work the next day! Mike and I grabbed an early dinner of fish and chips in Tenterfield and then drove on the outskirts of town for the sunset. The cloud over us was just a little too thick, but to the north it gave a little colour…so it gave a nice conclusion to the trip! A fantastic little jaunt for a few days…I love travelling, always so much to do and see!!! Can’t wait to do some more!!!
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 27 October 2008 20:43 ) |
