A Plan is formulated!

Yesterday we formulated a planned route to Melbourne, derived from three different sources, the first from friends in Sevenoaks, who have travelled in Australia and recommended a route around the Snowy Mountains. Secondly, from an Australian couple we met at a picnic stop on the Pacific Highway between Brisbane and Coffs Harbour. Their logic was that one should frequently turn left when travelling north in Eastern Australia and lastly from a map my Uncle in Victor Harbor provided showing the Melbourne Heritage Route.

Planned route from Cotts Harbour to Melbourne

So today we started the first part of the trip from Coffs Harbour to Armidale. However, before we had gone a few hundred metres and within the Wyndham complex we spotted our first wallaby. Mike still awaits a kangaroo sighting.

Our first wallaby sighting

The trip from Coffs Harbour to Armidale takes one down to Rayleigh and along the Bellinger River and climbs the escarpment of the Great Dividing Ridge skirting the Dorrigo rainforest. The route from Rayleigh is very steep and we drove through a low lying cloud with little visibility.

We travelled on into the New England National Park (NP) and once out of the cloud appreciated the assignment “New England” since the landscape is very much like the Yorkshire Dales in England. 

New England Landscape

The route also skirts other NPs such as Guy Fawkes, Cathedral Rocks and Oxley Wild Rivers. The highway is called the Waterfall Way and along the route there are waterfalls and gorges at Dorrigo (Dangars Falls), Ebor and Wollomombi.

Dangars Falls - both upper and lower

Dorrigo is the only significant town on the trip and sits at around 750m altitude and looks like a town locked in the 50’s and in part with buildings from a western movie. The Dangars Falls at Dorrigo are reasonably impressive but so are the propensities of flies that descend on one, literally dozens land on ones shirt or blouse. At the Dangars Falls we spotted our first kookaburra with its distinctive call https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXA0-YAoo9Q

Kookaburra

Along the Waterfalls Way, all streams, whether filled with water or not have specific “creek” names – an amazing attention to details, I thought the Aussies were a little bit more laidback!  There were spells along the trip where the motorist was warned about kangaroos on the roads but the kangaroos clearly don’t understand the picture language!

In the evening we strolled into the town for a meal and noted the architecture of a number of the commercial buildings, many from the 1800’s with balconies and elegant wrought ironwork. 

Armidale from the past

The residential houses are typically wooden and single storey, very similar to New England in the USA. The city with a population of under 24,000, smaller than many English towns, has two cathedrals, one Anglican and the other Catholic.  The city is also famous for being the highest city in Australia at 980m. It is located in the Northern Tablelands.  

A slight amusement is the Aussie alternative to zebra crossing Belisha beacons – see below:

Aussie equivalent to zebra crossing Belisha beacons