Outback Wanderers: Day 34: From Highlands to Tablelands

December 18, 2010

It’s a long driving day with a fair amount of drizzle. But the countryside is beautiful through the Highlands area, the mountainous region just off the coast of central NSW. The fecund earth is teeming with water and the wealth of verdant scenery compensates for the overcast day.

The rain looks like it will let up as we pull into Armidale for lunch. We find a sheltered picnic spot in the Botanic Gardens, but as soon as we park it starts up again. We sit in the car contemplating the luxury of a hot café lunch when two Aussie blokes pull up determined to have a fry-up for lunch. Amongst the swags in the back of their ute they pull out the necessary ingredients, wipe down the gas barbeque and quick smart the eggs and ham are frying. The smell is tormenting.

So we pull out our old standard – bread, lunch meat, mayonnaise, a few veggies – and compile yet another sandwich. It does the trick to stave off the hunger pangs for another few hours. We search for a consolation coffee at a café but, despite being a university town, everything’s shut up and quiet on a Saturday afternoon. Instead we stop at the spectacularly ornate Catholic cathedral, St Mary’s. It seems an overstatement in such a small town, but it must have had many influential supporters when it was built in the mid 19^th century.

Despite the chilly day, a lovely, fair-haired woman in a slinky sleeveless dress stands waiting out the front of the church. Johan offers her his jacket and she laughs nervously. After exploring the interior of the church – hand-tiled aisles and a sanctuary entirely decked out in marble – we return to the foyer to find a dozen impeccably dressed young people. The woman in the sleeveless slinky is handing out leaflets to the swelling number of guests. It’s Saturday afternoon; a wedding is about to take place.

We look down at our grubby appearance – five days of bush camping in the damp earth with no shower. We slip quietly around the back of the well-clad wedding guests and make a beeline back to our car.

We intended to get further north -- Glen Innes, Tenterfield, across the Queensland border, hoping for some warmth. It’s max 15˚ in Armidale today. But our lunch companions – who turned out to be two touring Dutchmen – say it’s always cold in Armidale. Go towards the sea and you’ll be warmer.

We forget that we’re nearly a kilometer above sea level here. West Australians don’t ever live that high so we don’t understand the effects of high elevation on the temperature. But when I think of my home country, the northwest of the USA, of course, 3000ft up in the summer can get chilly.

An information panel next to our picnic spot sings the praises of the “Waterfall Way”, heading east out of Armidale. On the map it’s a squiggly line portending a day of slow progress. But we could be on the coast tomorrow, and a few inspiring sites sound appealing after a somewhat bland day. East we go.

The Tablelands are a raised plateau with deep gorges weathered throughout them. It took millions of years to accomplish, but the result is spectacular. Sheer rock faces and not a few splendid waterfalls. The first we stop at, Wollomombi Falls, has it all: beautiful scenery, bushwalks through the canyon and an attractive camping ground. We stop for the night.