Part of the reason for staying at Twin Falls for a couple of days is that it isn't too far away from Port Macquarie, our kick-off base and we had a good opportunity to test the refrigerator in the campervan. Last time, we had a so-called three-way refrigerator, running off mains power or battery power or propane gas. This time we have battery power only - a second RV-type battery, charged by running the engine and independent of the starter battery, is our sole source of refrigerator power and we wanted to give it a bit of a test. An 80 amp-hour battery ought to last almost three days between charges and if it didn't, or any other mechanical problems surfaced, then it's not to far to retreat back to Port Macquarie. As it turned out, refrigeration wasn't a problem during the two-day test at Twin Falls. And here's a picture of the campervan, set up, complete with Canadian flag on the 2m antenna, supplemental sunshade and a couple of cold Heinekens provided by the refrigerator. The campervan's been rechristened, by the way, she is no longer Thomasina which somehow didn't seem to suit and is now Gertie2. Gertie1, by the way, is still trundling around merrily, fitted up with some auxiliary seat belts to suit the youg family who have taken her over.
The second day we went for a short walk amongst the Eucalyptus trees. It was only four or five km, but nevertheless very warm and humid among the gum trees. This is, of course, spring time here, so very many flowers and other forms of life, some less pleasant than others. We also visited the Twin Falls themselves, a tiny set of waterfalls by any standards, set above a small grotto pool in the heart of the rainforest area. We didn't go swimming there, because of the likelihood of leeches ! Much good it did - when we returned, to go for a swim in the salt-water pool, Shirley-Anne gave a blood curdling shriek and then danced around calling out "Take it off, take it off, take it off !". I surmised it was a leech and so it was - a very tiny one. Trying to get bigger I guess. A bit of salt took the ****** off but did little to arrest the minor bleeding of course. "What a lot of fuss about nothing, about an infinitesimal, a microscopic, a dust-mote of a dwarf leech" sez I, unwisely. And then it was my turn. I discovered an enormous, a gargantuan leech, a veritable mountain of bloodsucker feasting on my ankle, pumping litres of my precious bodily fluids away. Roars of laughter.
There aren't many very large gum trees around and a certain amount of reforestation is being done at Twin Falls. Some evidence of a major fire within the last fifty years or so, i.e very large but burned-out stumps but no signs of the so-called second growth gum trees - when an old tree is well past its prime then it seems to send out sucker trunks and the result is a ring of younger tress around the decayed original, this preocess taking a hundred years or so to accomplish. Here's a middle-aged gum tree which fancifully you might suppose to be a Naiad in the forest.
Regretfully, we had to leave Twin Falls after two days and make our way onward to Walcha (pronounced "Wallka").
A short walk of about 1 km around the rim of the gorge brought us to the lower fall, only about 150' high. Here you can see the tipped-up sedimentary layers of rock through which the river is working its way. Around the rim, these layers are leaning away from each other, eventually to spill over, breaking away to widen the gorge and, incidentally, taking us to the bottom if it should happen at that precise moment ! We had hoped that, because of the recent rainy weather, there would be a massive water flow but it wasn't exceptional although one could certainly see the width of the partly-dried-up water-course.
We stayed in Walcha only overnight, intending to travel toward Coff's Harbour on the coast, partly because there is an IRLP repeater there, vk2irl (what else ?) so there was every chance of calling into Ottawa and finding out what, if anything, was going on there. The route was to take us through the so-called Waterfall Way, a scenic route with many spectacular waterfalls. As it happened, the gps route was accidentally deleted, so there's no record available. However, we did indeed visit one or two of these waterfalls, the most spectacular being at Wollomombi. Again, it was difficult to get to the bottom of the fall and actually not easy to get a good view from the top. Notice how muddy the water is in the pool at the bottom of the fall, which is about 200' high.
Coff's Harbour was originally just a sleepy little fishing village but nowadays it's a thriving tourist centre, perhaps best known for its Big Banana, advertising a banana plantation where you can see all the activities associated with commercial banana growing - the care necessary to produce acceptable crops, including bagging the bunches well before harvest in order to thwart the birds and keeping off the insects, fungus and other pests which would ruin the fruit. The Big Banana itself is nucleus for a sort of Coney Island place with the usual array of kitsch. Well, I suppose a Big Banana is in itself the ultimate in Kitsch - there are several hundred Big Things scattered over Australia (the Big Pineapple, the Big Apple, the Big Crayfish, the Big Oyster etc) and I suppose you could entertain yourself by collecting all these Big Things. I don't think we will though.Here's the Big Banana for you.......
.......and among the entertainments the Big Banana provides are - ice skating lessons and - a genuine snow slope down which you can slide upon pneumatic tubes. Unfortunately, the snow slope had melted this day else we might have asked about the possibility of acting as ski patrollers for a day !
We stayed two days in Coff's Harbour (actually, trying to get the IRLP link to work, late at night, corresponding to early morning in Ottawa. It never did, and we couldn't even raise anyone locally to give us some help with it. We did, however, go for walks along the harbour front and out into the bay on the (very long) jetty. The map here shows how we apparently walked upon the waters but, no, we were securely above the surface upon this long structure.
We left Coff's Harbour and drove northwest again toward the mountains. Just short of the hills we stopped for the night at Grafton, staying overnight at Sunset Caravan Park. We had stayed here before, three years ago, but Pete, the then owner had sold his place a year ago. Nevertheless the new owners let us connect to the internet and so we were at last able to get email and send long overdue replies to them. This is a small and very friendly Caravan site and we thoroughly recommend it.
But we were on our way upward and onward into the mountains, on our way to Three Waters, a sort of dude ranch cum nature reserve where again we stayed only one night.
Three waters (qv www.gleninnes.com/3waters ) is a few km nw of the little town of Glen Innes, notable for its sapphire deposits and also for its Celtic background. Settled originally by the Scots and the Welsh, the Scots have benefited by their more appealing public image (the Welsh being notoriously a dour people) and so the street signs are bilingual - in Gaelic and not Welsh. As a part of this Scots image, there has been erected a replica of one of the Orkney stone circles, where, daily, you can listen to the bagpipes being played.
It was quite cool here and owing to the recent heavy rains, infested with millions of flies. When we made our way to Three Waters, named because of the conjunction of three rivers (read "streams") this became even more of a curse owing to the presence of the horses there. We met Steve, the owner on his way out to get a dog "fixed" so we just found our own way in and settled down for the night, fighting off the flies ! Three waters is a large property (1200 acres or so) and we found a trio of young german ladies already in residence, acting as "Wwoofers", meaning "will work on organic farms for essentials and a room" or something like that. Here we encountered the Australian stockriders saddle, essential, it appears for that scene in "The Man from Snowy River" where the eponymous hero rides down a cliff to save bullying father. That's Michael Douglas and Kirk Douglas for you non silver screen addicts out there. This is Steve, showing how you can stretch out your legs on this saddle.....
Three waters is an excellent place to visit - when there are no flies - and it's a so-called "primitive site" in the sense hat there are no powered sites available. This may well change in the near future ans Steve is in the process of building a great clubhouse which will add enormously to the facilities here. We would have liked to stay longer, but we were on our way to Elephant Rock (qv www.elephantrock-naturally.com.au ) which is where I am currently typing this. Elephant Rock is a beautiful place and it looks as though we'll be here for some time. so I will close this long long entry and go have a quick rum and coke with the rest of the gang. See you later.......
