After an hour or so of discussing photography and cameras with our neighbours, John & Marie, we finally headed off to explore the Border Ranges National Park. There was one waterfall, Brushbox Falls, near the campsite so we headed there first.

Brushbox Falls, Border Ranges NP

From there we headed along the national park road we couldn’t find yesterday, the first stop was to check out another campsite, Timber Top, but it was walk-in for tents so the spot we had chosen was the better option. Then we took a loop road to an Antarctica Beech look out. They are very fond of this tree over on the east coast, fossil records indicate that it was around in the dinosaur era, so nearly every national park with some remnant rainforest highlights their Antarctica Beech trees. The next stop was the Pinnacle lookout, this one was spectacular, it was about 800 mtrs off the road but the last 100 mtrs went along this rock ridge where there was a spectacular drop off on both sides. Jacky had decided to sit this one out but I was so impressed that I hiked back to the car and persuaded her to come and see it for herself. From this point you can see back to the Springbrook National Park and the Best of All Lookout where we had been two days earlier.

The caldera valley surrounding Mt Warning

We had lunch at Black Butt lookout which had picnic table right close to the escarpment so you could admire the view. The view is of an ancient volcano cauldron, you can see a huge escarpment that forms a circle around Mt Warning that must be nearly 100 kms in diameter. Mt Warning is north west of Byron Bay and is the first part of the Australian mainland to receive sunlight each day. It’s about a 3 hr hike to the summit so it’s an early start if you want to witness the first rays of sunlight before anyone else in Australia.

We finished the afternoon off with another walk through Antarctica Beech forest on Bar Mountain.

Eastern Yellow Robin, our friendly camp visitor