The road from Armidale back to Coffs Harbour is called the Waterfall Way so today’s plan was to see what they were talking about. The expectations were not particularly high as the countryside around here is quite dry and brown, most of north-eastern NSW has had little rain over the past 6 mths.

The first stop was down the road from the campsite to the Point Lookout, at 1563 mtrs, the view was pretty impressive. While it doesn’t snow here often there were a lot of snow gums near the lookout and all the wooden railings were covered with lichen and moss.

New England National Park

We then headed off to Wollombi Falls, apparently the 3^rd highest waterfall drop in Australia. From the lookout you could see a trickle of water falling down into a massive gorge. There was another waterfall in a separate gorge leading in to the main gorge but it had even less water. We checked another lookout for a different view then had lunch in a stone and timber shelter.

We headed towards Armidale and stopped at an old historical town of Hillgrove, in 1905 there were nearly 3500 people, today there are just 100. A few of the old buildings remained but most had been removed and only markers indicated what had been there before. The old school house had an interesting museum with many relics and photographs from the old gold and antimony mines that kept the town thriving. It certainly gave an insight to how hard and dangerous mining was in the pioneer days.

By the time we left here we were running out of time the visit the other waterfalls I had in mind and with the general lack of water in the area I didn’t expect them to have much water flowing over them so we headed into Armidale for a little shopping and a cup of coffee. Then it was back to camp, collect some firewood to ensure we had a good hot fire for the evening.