April 27 - Dorrigo National Park

The original question asked by our Mr C was can we go to Gondwana on our trip (after all we had learnt so much about Gondwana at the Age of Fishes Museum), its on the map he said.  And he was right.  Marked on our map was not a rainforest but a band of rainforest national parks which form the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area.  This area starts just north of Port Macquarie and extends into southern Queensland.  Our walk in Mt Yarrahapinni was through one of these remnants of Gondwana – but at the back of Coffs Harbour is Dorrigo National Park which is a truly amazing area and something I wanted very much to show the kids.  The drive out to the national park is incredibly scenic going through the lovely township of Bellingen and driving along the Bellinger river before climbing up through the national park with creeks turning to waterfalls on the side of the road. 

Dorrigo National Park is well served by a fantastic rainforest centre and skywalk.  The skywalk provides the most amazing views of the rainforest canopy and down to the coast.  It also had our first fotopost which Mr C was very keen to take advantage of and take a family portrait.

There is then a walking track which starts from the centre and loops through this tall, lush subtropical rainforest.  We were warned that parts of this track were steep so after a short walk near the centre we drove further up to a picnic area and started our walk there.  This was a popular centre and walking track – there was a large size (noisy) school group and the range of different languages present showed how much of an attraction this area is.  Our walk took us down a steep and winding walking track through the depths of the rainforest, with its 600 year old trees, amazing habitat of epiphytes and fungi to the cascading Crystal Shower Falls. 

These falls were totally amazing – David and I have both seen fantastic waterfalls before, we have deliberately walked to falls after flooding rains.  These falls are beautiful in and of themselves, but what makes them so special, you can walk behind them.  And when you do this is what you see.

 

Of course what goes down must come up – so after a very aerobic hike back up to our car we were rewarded with another lookout with more amazing views.

We then drove to the also lovely Dangar Falls but didn’t do the full walk as time was working against us now.  We drove back to Coffs Harbour via a different and unsealed road – which was another lovely, scenic drive (albeit the very, very slow cattle truck we were behind for a very, very long time was a tad annoying).  When our boys are older and can do some longer walks I would love to come back and tackle some of the longer tracks.  Dorrigo is a truly special place which we would love to explore more some day.