Apsley Falls to Brooms Head to Home

Fri 15 Mar

Apsley Falls Campsite

Breaking camp this morning we set off to Apsley Fall NP located about 18 klm out of Walcha – pronounced Walcha.  Being Friday we planned to arrive early, about 1pm, to hopefully get a good campsite before those pesky weekend campers arrive.  As it turned out we could have arrived at 6pm as there was no one here.  A couple in a van arrived late afternoon and that was it.  We had the pick of the sites and chose one right on the edge of Apsley Gorge.  The walls of the gorge are lit up each afternoon by the western sun and can be seen from our chairs under the awning.

For those following us from home, the campground is beautifully maintained.  The fire pits are cleaned out, there is no rubbish, each site has its own table and chair and fireplace positioned over pavers, firewood is provided, wash water and great flush toilets and all this for $10 per night for two adults.

Mid-afternoon we went for a walk along the top of the Gorge and to the lookouts and waterfall.  Again the recent rains have provided a lot of water for the falls and they can be heard cascading into the gorge from our campsite.

Apsley Gorge

For my children: Ryan and Amy - we are camped in exactly the same campsite we were in when we were here with Grandad and Felicity about 13 years ago. It was the trip we did with them to the Warrumbungles.

The couple camped with us had trouble with their hot water system tonight and after coming to ask for help we worked out that neither of us could get it going.  Seeing them the next morning John said he saw the red light on when he woke up (which wasn't working last night) and gave it a go and happy days - hot water!

Apsley Lower Falls

Sat 16 Mar – today we did the two hour Oxley walk which goes over a swing bridge to the other side of the gorge.  Again the day was beautiful with initial heavy fog blanketing the campground and gorge until 9.30am then clearing to unveil a clear blue sky.  The walk took us to four lookouts where recent landslips could be seen as well as the four separate waterfalls that flow through this part of the gorge.

Arriving back to camp we were now the only ones here so we decided to go into Walcha to find a friend.  

Lunch was at a lovely little pub.  Julie ordered two coffees and her lunch and forgot about me.  After shoving the last of her meal into her mouth she said through dripping sauce that she may not have ordered my lunch.  A review of the sales docket confirmed her nurturing nature and in I went to order my lunch.  For the record it has been the best steak sandwich so for on the trip.  This could be because I was starving hungry by the time I started eating it.   

Back at camp, it looked like we might have the place to ourselves tonight, but as I write this at 4.30pm, two other campers have driven in.  This will give us a better night’s sleep having others around – being all by ourselves can be a bit eerie at night.

Sun 17 Mar – we woke to a perfect day, clear skies and a light breeze.  A small family of wallabies kept us company while we had breakfast.  After tidying up we drove downhill towards Wauchope, pronounced Wauchope as opposed to Wauchope as many people call it, to Tia and Tiara Falls.  Here there are nice walks either side of the gorge with lookouts over the waterfall and down along the gorge.  We did both walks and did not see a sole the whole time -everyone must be in Wauchope. Returning back to camp we spent the afternoon relaxing. 

Tia Falls

Tiara Gorge

This butterfly enjoyed the view too

Termite mound

Thanks to the firewood provided, each night we have had a campfire and spend 3-4 hours staring into the “Campers TV” until the sun goes down and the cool of the evening descends.  

The car and van are going really well and we now have a good understanding about how everything works including our water and solar power needs.  The next thing to get is a small 240v inverter to allow us to charge the camera batteries off 12 volts.  We spend so much time without 240v our camera batteries run out before we can charge them.  Packing up and setting up is now quite quick as we have everything repacked into the most convenient locations for this exercise.

Leaving Apsley Falls Campground

Mon 18 Mar - Apsley Fall to South West Rocks

Having been bush camping for over a week, it's time for a caravan park. Julie is keen to get some sea air so we headed down the Great Dividing Range towards Port Macquarie then turned north to South West Rocks and the Trial Bay Caravan Park. This van park is very pretty with many eastern grey kangaroos feeding around us and thousands of birds in the trees above. 

Horseshoe Bay - South West Rocks

Historic Trail Bay Jail

Solitary Confinement

Trial Bay Jail Prison Cells

South West Rocks beach walk

 

We stayed here four nights, spending the days exploring the region. The historic Trial Bay Jail, the lighthouse and beach walks were the highlights. We took to walking the 45 minutes from our camp each morning, along the beach into South West Rocks for morning coffee overlooking Horseshoe Bay. With light winds and smooth seas the whole area was a picture. 

Smokey Bay Lighthouse headland

Now that we are along the coast, we have rain each night - this seems to be a symptom of being at the beach. 


Fri 22 Mar - Trial Bay to Broom's Head

After four nights at Trial Bay (named after the shipwreck of the Trial) we broke camp and headed to Brooms Head Caravan Park to an unpowered campsite right on the water’s edge. 

Broom's Head Caravan Park - our campsite

Our campground from headland

Walk to the 'back beach' looking towards Sandon River in the distance.

Walk along the front beach.

Headland walk

We do have tap water so our power source is solar which, as I have said before, works a treat. The solar easily runs the fridge, TV, lights and keeps all our batteries charged. To our great surprise and pleasure, the park is less than half full and is in great shape in readiness for Easter next weekend.

Our days were spent walking the beaches in front of us and up to the headland that overlooks the van park to the 'back beach' that leads to Sandon River 8.5 klm to the south - a camp spot we had in the first week of this trip.

We stayed here three nights and had the full array of weather.  On the afternoon we arrived we had 35 knot winds blowing right off the sea into the back of the van.  There was no way the awning could have been put up as it would have ended up in Wauchope.  The next day was beautiful with light winds and clear skies, while the final day was settled and hot during the day leading to a wild storm late afternoon.

Brooms Head Caravan park is excellent - just like the van parks of old with no jumping castles, water slides - just a beach, a large rock pool, great surf and good fishing.  Lots of locals come here over the weekend to have a swim and a picnic with their kids - just great.

Mon 25 Mar - Broom's Head to home

Today we packed up and set off for home at about 9am.  The three hour trip home was great except for lots of roadworks trying to be finished before Easter.  I don't really mind the roadworks as they slow the traffic down making for a safer trip.  We dropped our van off into storage and settled back in to the apartment.

Our seven week trip was great with little changes needed to our setup.  On balance we will take more out of the car and van than we will add for our next, much longer, trip starting at the end of April.

Bye for now

Jeff 'n Julie

Canberra to Chaffey Dam

EPIC Van Park campsite

Wed 6 Mar - today we set off to Canberra for four nights.  Surprisingly Canberra has little in the way of quality caravan parks.  Checking into EPIC (Exhibition Park in Canberra) aka the Show Grounds we found an OK spot at the back over looking the animal stalls from the Canberra Show just two weeks ago.  The only action in the park at the moment is trotting horse training.  The park is full but they don't squeeze the sites close together so it feels pretty good.

Latest three Victoria Cross recipients

Over the four days we visited the War Memorial, which is always both moving and fascinating and Old Parliament House.

Old Parliament House had a great display of all the country's Prime Ministers and stories of the times they lived and what their term was most renowned for.  We could walk freely through both the House of Representatives and Senate chambers as well as the offices of the politicians.  

Next day we traveled south of Canberra into the ACT's beautiful national park.  Camp spots abound and with 160 klm of walking tracks to choose from we consulted one of their friendly Rangers to narrow down our options.  The winner was a 6 klm walk to Yankee Hat Cave - one of only two sites with aboriginal paintings near Canberra.  We had a great walk through lush green fields filled with hundreds of kangaroos and rabbits.  The latter being under control orders with baits set beside their enormous warrens.  

Yankee Hat walk

Yankee Hat Aboriginal Rock Art

After this experience we had a snack back at the start of the trail watched by a very itchy enormous buck eastern grey kangaroo.  He was dozing under a tree right where the table and chair was for us.  He slowly moved away and I can say that I was pleased he did  - he was huge.

Black Mountain Tower

Travelling back to Canberra we drove up to Black Mountain which has the needle Telstra communications tower atop.  Being 2.30 pm and yet to have lunch we caught the lift up the the tower and a fine light lunch  looking out the windows across the whole of Canberra.

If this wasn't enough, it was followed by dinner with friends, Kerrie and Mark Hayes,at a very busy Chinese restaurant followed by a walk around the Parliamentary Precinct to see the buildings transformed by laser lights.  

Old Parliament House

 Arriving home at 11.30 pm, which is very very late for us pensioners we fell into bed with the alarm set for 6 am.

6 am came around too quickly but up we got and went to the shores of Lake Burley Griffin to watch the Canberra Balloon Spectacular - one of the top three (or the third best) ballooning events in the world.  About 30+ balloons went up including Darth Vader, a turtle and a rooster.  The day had clear skies and light winds - just perfect.

Arriving home we went to the Canberra EPIC markets being held 300 metres away.  I went home almost immediately as this was just too much excitement.  Julie came home with all sorts of goodies including some of the best vanilla FUDGE we have had - and that says a lot!

The rest of the day was just doing the washing, washing the car and getting ready for our yet to be decided destination tomorrow.

Sun 10 Mar – not having seen all Canberra and its regions have to offer there is enough left to justify us coming back again.  We broke camp and set off for Flat Rock – a free camp approximately 20 klm north of Oberon just south of Bathurst which is north of Canberra.  We have started our trip towards home wanting to be back by the Wednesday before Easter.

Flat Rock

Getting to Flat Rock involved some of the steepest driving we have done with the van on the back.  At one point we were in 1^st gear grinding up a very steep road for 10 minutes.  Katoomba and the Blue Mountains are just to the east of us so the mountainous terrain is to be expected.  Flat Rock is very pretty with a big flat rock mostly damming the creek in front of the camp area creating rapids.  It’s lovely listening to the constant roar from them during the day and particularly at night lying in bed. 

Speaking to a couple from the Gold Coast who had been here for 4 nights, the weekend was very busy with about 12 separate camp groups and lots of day visitors.  Being Sunday night most of them had left or were packing up to go leaving only 6 camps remaining.   Four of the groups left early Monday morning.

Swiss bike riders

Two pushbike riders from Switzerland arrived about 5pm.  They are travelling from Sydney to Alice Springs and have 6 weeks to do it in.  They had travelled 50klm today.  After riding all day through the hilly terrain in the region, one of the pair dug out a skipping rope and proceeded to skip for 10 minutes then do exercises before setting up the tent, gathering firewood, cooking dinner and doing some washing in the creek.  I felt sorry for him so after getting another beer I tried not to let him see it.

The couple from the Gold Coast also had a fire and they kindly invited us down for a chat around the campfire.  A lovely night was had swapping details of good camping spots and caravan ideas.

We spent two nights here and the morning we left we started talking to a couple of ladies travelling together in a camper.  One was right into fishing and talked her way into getting a trout fishing lesson yesterday from an ex-Canadian guy who travelled three hours from near Sydney just to come trout fishing here at Flat Rock.  At sunset - 7.30pm - he had a three hour drive back home.  By the way he caught one trout! 

Tue 12 March - Leaving Flat Rock we headed for Lake Windermere and the Cudgegong Waters Caravan Park.  The place is huge and virtually empty.  We chose an unpowered camp spot with nearly 270 degree views.  Perched high above this pretty dam we were entertained by the many water and land birds going about their daily lives. 

Lake Windermere Campsite

View from our campsite

I decided to give our generator a go for the first time on the trip.  I had just about filled the wash-water tanks at a van park tap before we set up so I started the genny and did a load of washing.  It worked a treat so we now have confidence that, given a water supply, we can stay remote for ages.  

We decide to stay only one night here which is unusual for us.  The place just wasn't pretty enough for us - joke.  

Timing our trip home and taking into account weekends etc we set our sights on Chaffey Dam - Bowling Alley Point Recreation Reserve - some 300klm north and just south of Tamworth.  We were recommended the place by the Gold Coast couple we met at Flat Rock who had stayed there for two weeks.

Wed 12 March - Chaffey Dam.

The day's travel was along quiet back-roads through picturesque scenery which took us to Mudgee for morning tea and then to Willow Tree for lunch.  We arrived at Chaffey Dam around 3pm.  The place is lovely and we were able to get a good spot under trees and overlooking the Dam.  There is drinking water (near green footbridge), flush toilets and $1 showers.  It costs $5 per car per night to stay here - a bargain.

The place is peaceful and given there is an enormous area to camp in our neighbours are over 100 metres away.

Chaffey Dam campsite - view from van

The days remain warm and the nights cool - great camping weather.

Fri 15 Mar – Chaffey Dam to Apsley Falls National Park

Our time at Chaffey Dam was highlighted by a drive up to Hanging Rocks; a lookout at around 1200 metres overlooking the valleys and farming lands below.  The countryside is a picture as a result of recent rains from the tropical cyclones and deep lows that flooded the coastal areas in recent months.  We followed this lookout with a quick visit to Sheba Dam - a free camp beside a little dam high in the mountains – just to see what it was like for future reference.  It is very pretty with limited sites along the side of the dam - probably good for a couple of nights stay.

Hanging Rocks

On the way to these sites, from our campsite, we drove along a dirt road that follows a stream that feeds the dam ending up in the picturesque town of Nundle.  This winner of NSW’s Tidy Town competition is very quaint with great old-time shops and a good and busy pub selling coffee and counter meals.  A lot of gold prospecting goes on in the region and the aptly named Fossickers Caravan park is well located on the banks of the stream we followed from home.

Arriving back at our camp for a late lunch we relaxed and watched the water birds feeding on the dam.  Late afternoon the breeze came up so I rolled the awning up and we retired for the night when the sun went to sleep and the cool night air arrived.  With clear skies and a long way from any major town, the night sky lights up with millions of stars.  Cloudy constellations can easily be seen either side of the bright Milky Way that stripes its way across the sky.