Day 11 Monday June 16^th 2014 Urunga

It is invigorating walking through the mangroves on the boardwalk at sunup. The ospreys are wheeling overhead and scaring the wits out of the seagulls. You don’t have to look up to find them, just follow the cries of the seagulls.

Today we drive the Waterfall Way up to Dorrigo high up in the Great Dividing Range. We follow the Bellinger Valley, this is such a lush area, the river, the dark blue of the sharp imposing mountains behind and stands of tall palms in the paddocks. Cows up to their ankles in grass, chew contentedly. As we climb higher there are macadamia orchards. The last time we were in this area we were looking for the free camp at Thora. It appears that we gave up only a few hundred metres before our goal, as today we find the camp and the little store beside it. It is a good camp spot. The Waterfall Way is stunning, the road crosses two waterfalls and there is a small one interestingly named ‘Weeping Jenny’. Up on the plateau, Dorrigo is nestled in the hills. We find the house where our sister in law lived as a child and a little further down the same road we cross an innocent little creek. The creek becomes the striking Dangar Falls and it plunges over a 30 metre precipice. The Dorrigo Sewage Works has an unusual garden sculpture, a Lavatree. It is a tower of old toilet bowls filled with flowers. The sign describes it as: Lavatree, species Pissina Flushturdum.

We drive on to the hamlet of Ebor about another half hour away and a gentle uphill climb most of the way. The views over the dairy farms are idyllic. Ebor is tiny, just a pub, a cafe and an old servo. Behind the town the Guy Fawkes River plunges 115metres in two drops to the canyon below. The falls are mesmerising and the walk along the canyon rim is a great bush walk. There are people abseiling off the canyon walls and a friendly little kookaburra lets us photograph him.

On the return journey we drive through more dairy farms to the Griffiths Lookout right on top of the Range. Those jersey cows have the best view in the country.

We arrive back in Bellingen mid afternoon and have a late lunch soaking up the atmosphere of this alternate town.

Travelling Kms: 0

2020 Note: On re reading this trip I’m thinking that it should be called ‘Crawling the Coast’. No matter how many times we travel this east coast we still find places that we’ve never seen or explored before and we’re still captivated.