Along Waterfall Way!

Good Morning!

Way too tired last night to blog, so am up bright and early and my fingers are flying! So…to recap…took a nice walk down the road. MUCH cooler today, and becoming very blustery. Norm and Marg had some business to transact, so we took off on our own, heading to Dorrigo National Park, about half hour down the road, and then up into the mountains (Great Dividing Range – isn’t that a GREAT name?) The day was mostly overcast, and as we headed up, became very misty! Fortunately, the name of our highway was “Waterfall Way” so lots of water was to be expected!

Our first stop was at Bellingen, along the Bellinger River. Bellingen is very much an artist-type community, so we stopped at The Old Yellow Butter Factory, which now accommodates shops. Lovely things – glass, textiles, leather and wood, all made by local artisans. In fact, you could watch the leather-worker as he made things – everything just lovely! We found some wonderful wooden spoons made out of red ironbark, and an amazingly cute votive candle holder in glass. (LOVED an amazingly beautiful dining room table and set of six chairs, but wasn’t sure we would be able to fit them in our luggage safely; would probably be overweight…) Their café also had goodies, so we split a piece of carrot cake – YUM! – before heading out again.

Bellingen, like many of the smaller towns we’ve seen, was lovely. Lots of very fancy wrought iron around upstairs balconies, which seems to be very common here; many houses built UP on stilts. (As we were walking around the Butter Factory, there was a line on one of the doors indicating the height of the 1991 flood – three feet up the door! Scary!) Many of the towns remind us of small U.S. towns in the midwest from the 1950’s and 1960’s! Neat, tidy self-contained little places; no chains or strip malls; everything distinctive and part of the town for years! It’s like deja-vue all over again!

Then, on to Dorrigo and the National Park! Found the visitor center and walked out on their Sky Walk – a wooden path set up HIGH in the trees and projecting out over the forest. By now it was beginning to mist, but the view was still lovely (see pictures with LOTS of trees and a red one in the middle!) Saw two beautiful Crimson Rosellas -- brilliant birds, parrot-family, glowing bright red bodies, with purple wings! (Unfortunately they moved, so didn't get a picture!) Also drove out to Never Never Picnic Area, about 10 km down a gravel road, but as it was starting to rain in earnest, decided against a walk … considering that we left our umbrellas in Tucson and our jackets in Coffs Harbour…obviously we’re not Boy Scouts! Then headed into the town of Dorrigo, where we decided to have lunch. Ate at the Dorrigo Hotel. R ordered a steak sandwich and chips; I ordered a hamburger with bacon and chips…then wondered, would I be getting a fried egg on my burger??? Well, I didn’t – but we both got two healthy slices of red beets on our sandwiches – and, while we both like beets, I wasn’t exactly interested in including them as part of my burger…R said they were good, although he wasn’t sure how much they actually added to his sandwich! (He’s SO much more adventurous than me!) My burger came with bacon – NOT at all like we get at home; rather more like a small ham steak on top! Excellent, albeit unexpected. Great chips! (Translation: French Fries.) From there we headed to Dangar Falls – just on the other side of Dorrigo, but absolutely BEAUTIFUL waterfall! (See picture.)

Decided at this point to start heading back, with a detour to Griffith’s Lookout, which we missed on the way up (Note sign post…had problems determining what was what, as a bit overloaded to car passengers zipping past…) Lovely viewpoint when we finally arrived, but would be MUCH better on a slightly clearer day.

Made it back to the condo just on 3 p.m., just in time for the Melbourne Cup – apparently the biggest horse-racing day in the OZ calendar. Knowing absolutely nothing about Australian horse-racing, couldn’t even figure out the odds on the TV set, but a lovely grey horse called Efficient came up on the stretch from the outside to win – it’s a LONG race; two miles – and they even managed to interview the jockey while he was still riding his horse! That was one happy man!

A little later, we all went over to the rec center for a wine tasting put on by Two Tails Winery, which is based not too far up the coast. Marg and Norm had already stopped there earlier last week, and had brought some of their wine to the condo, but not we had the full range to taste – everything from a sparkling white to various ports! Quite a variety! Really liked both the sparkling white and their Semillon; bought several bottles out of the “kitty” we’d set up for groceries; wine to be delivered this morning.

Back to the condo, then for the picnic we had originally planned on having for lunch. Lots of good things from the Woolworth’s deli – excellent cheddar and smoked gouda; fabulous dried tomatoes; roasted eggplant; roasted capsicum (translation: red peppers); marinated mushrooms; two kinds of bread; a spicy Spanish salami, ham and I forget what else – a great opportunity to clean out the fridge! And, we watched The Dish that Norm and Marg had rented specially for us. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, we recommend it HIGHLY. It’s the story (based on a true story; no idea what may have been changed along the way) of the Parkes, NSW (New South Wales) radio telescope, and the part it played in relaying TV coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing around the world. Truly a funny movie, and very warm and gentle as well. We loved it! Some of the lines are so funny that I was chuckling all evening!

As it was getting late then, there was only time for Norm, Marg & R to play one game of UPWARDS; Norm won, but R is getting better at it! I prefer to watch! Quite a rainstorm did kick up, and it was wonderful to go to bed to the sound of the rain outside! As R pointed out, all this tropical loveliness didn’t get this way using sprinklers!

So, that’s it for today; more later!

Love,

m