On Monday 27 December we took the drive to see Gara Gorge, Wollomombi Falls & Bakers Falls in the Oxley Wild Rivers NP
Another good weather day although a tad cool, and rain threatening later.
We went to do the very top section of The Waterfall Way – travelling east as far as Wollomombi Falls. First up is Gara Gorge in the Oxley Wild Rivers NP. You get onto the road to Gara easily – turning right onto Castledoyle Rd at the signpost only 2km out from Armidale on the Waterfall Way. It is mostly a dirt road in but not so bad. Very pretty country we drive through.
You first come to a picnic area at Blue Pool, but we drove past that to the second picnic area, from where the walks start. Very nice picnic area with toilets and BBQs.
We thought to walk the historic Threlfal Walk, a 5.5km loop, which follows the remnants of the original hydroelectricity scheme – the first in Australia. The river was dammed at Blue Hole in 1894 and the water flow was controlled by a weir into a flume. The power was fed to the booming town of Hillgrove. The scheme closed in 1920.
As recommended in the brochure we went around the loop clockwise, and the track took us to the first bridge across the Gara R. We walked on to the Blue Hole. The track follows the cascading river with heaps of water in it – very pretty.
At Blue Hole there is another bridge across the river to the first picnic area. The small dam on the river is just up-river from the bridge. If there were less water the area would have been great for rock pools.
We crossed the bridge and walked to the picnic area but then we could not find a track. So we backtracked to the pool and back over the bridge and there saw the sign indicating the track. However, the way it was positioned it looked like the track was straight ahead, over the bridge. Never mind, we get confused at times.
The first half of the Threlfall Track is away from the river and the walk is through a variety of grassed, wooded and rocky terrain.
But there is little to look at until you get closer to the Gorge. The walk back from the Gorge to the start follows the river and presents far more to look at. In hindsight it would have been better to walk the loop anti-clockwise as far as the Lookout, then turned around and walked back again. Still, you don’t know these things until you’ve already done them.
The Lookout presents a view down the gorge and the river can be seen below. Impressive. The gorge also persists for some distance up the river before beginning to get lower in the landscape.
On the walk back upriver we followed the gorge and every now and again we had a clear view to the river and various rapids. At one point I saw a lovely deep burgundy orchid, and then increasingly more of these wonderful plants.
There are points on the map marked as places where various structures of the hydro plant once stood. But there is virtually no infrastructure there today. Which was fine by us as we were enjoying the views to the river and gorge boulders.
We returned to the Waterfall Way and turned east (right) to get to Wollomombi Gorge. Because the Threlfall Track had taken so long – seemed a lot further than 5.5km to us, and our watch backed this up – we left Metz, Hillgrove and Baker Falls until the return drive. Nice country again.
Wollomombi Gorge is only about 40km from Armidale – it’s all sealed roads. It is in a World Heritage area, is the deepest fall in NSW, contains 2 falls – Wollomombi Falls of 220m (100m single drop) and the nearby Chandler Falls. The highest falls in Australia are the Wallaman Falls in Queensland – 305m with 268m single drop.
The Falls are stunning – see for yourselves. The lookout is only about 50m from the carpark. We also walked around to Checks Lookout, great views from a different angle, and then to Eagle Lookout for a view down the gorge, along the river. The area where the waterfall is looks more like a giant sinkhole than a gorge at first.
We did not do the difficult Chandlers Walk (3km return) as there are Grade 5 section.
Back on the Waterfall Way heading back to Armidale, we called in to Bakers Creek Falls – we left Metz and Hillgrove until next time. Bakers Creek Falls look very similar to the Chandler Falls – quite stunning in their own right. We are just so pleased we are in this area after a lot of rain to see the all the falls and rivers really pumping. Could be a tad disappointing after a dry spell.
