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Published: March 25th 2009
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From Myall Lakes, we headed up the coast towards Port Macquarie. At Kew, we headed east and stopped for another lunch of BBQ sausages at North Haven Park. Our main reason for visiting Port Macquarie was the seafood buffet at the Port City Bowls Club held every Wednesday and Saturday nights. We had chanced upon this place two years ago on a hire-car trip from Brisbane to Sydney (via Byron Bay) and had had a feast at the buffet. Thomas had just turned 7 at the time and ate so many oysters, prawns and mussels that a lady stopped by and remarked that she had never seen a boy enjoy his food so much! So one of the few aims we had on this trip was to revisit the bowls club for another seafood buffet. As Thomas would say, Mission Accomplished!
We stayed at Flynns Beach Caravan Park, which was a bit of a walk to the Bowls Club, but the walk was desperately needed after our huge feasting extravaganza there.
On Thursday we spent a lovely morning at the nearby Flynns Beach and did some school work in the afternoon.
On Friday we packed up and headed
up to Kempsey, home of the Akubra hat and the late Slim Dusty. We took the Slim Dusty Way through Bellbrook, then continued on a narrow gravel road across the Great Dividing Range to Wollomombi Gorge at the northern end of the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. We camped at Green Gully camp ground, which was very nice.
On Saturday we went to Edgars Lookout and then visited Wollomombi Falls, the highest falls in NSW and the second highest in Australia (Wallaman Falls in Qld is the highest). According to Wikipedia, “from the very top to the very bottom the height is approx 220 metres although its biggest drop where the water "falls" is only 100 m”. Nearby was Chandler Falls. The Chandler Walk was closed but we did the relatively short Wollomombi Walk which crossed the Wollomombi River and has spectacular views into the Chandler River gorge.
From there we drove into Armidale and stumbled across the Armidale Autumn Festival. We had lunch and then wandered around the festival for a while before heading south to Dangars Falls & Gorge, also located in Oxley Wild Rivers NP (but not to be confused with Dangar Falls - see
Wollomombi Falls
2nd highest falls in Australia below). We also stopped briefly at Bakers Creek Falls on the drive back to Wollomombi.
On Sunday we took the
Waterfall Way back to the coast. Along the way we visited Ebor Falls at the southern tip of Guy Fawkes River National Park, which was created by the now extinct Ebor Volcano more than 18 million years ago. Next it was Dangar Falls, located just north of Dorrigo, then we visited Dorrigo National Park. After walking out on the dramatic Skywalk, we walked the Wonga Walk, which took us past Tristania Falls and Crystal Showers Falls. Crystal Showers Falls is great because you can walk behind the falls. From here we drove past Sherrard and Newell roadside falls on the drive towards the coast.
By the time we had finished the
Waterfall Way, we had seen enough waterfalls to last us the rest of the trip. However, there is no doubt that Thomas, who has taken a liking to visiting and rating waterfalls (usually they get a 10/10), will find more that we have to visit along the way.
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tom-paul
non-member comment
Nature.
Love the photos. I will put it in my to do list as Im heading to Port again this week. Its a great spot and more than likely will end up living up there. Peace out, tom