April 4th-6th, 2011- Armidale- Dumaresq Dam

Monday April 4th saw us journey further down the New England to Armidale. We stayed at Dumaresq (pronounced Dumarick by the locals) which was a free campsite about 10Km out of Armidale. It was a nice location but surprisingly busy. Very basic Toilet Block and no other facilities to speak of. We set up and did a 3Km walk around the Dam. Quite picturesque and a fairly easy walk we completed in about 45 minutes. We were camped beside some nice people, Ian and Chris Neilson, from near Toowoomba.  Had a few good visits with them comparing places to go and caravaning tricks.

On Tuesday April 5th we travelled into Armidale and took the Heritage Bus Tour which had been recommended to us by a number of people including the Ransleys. The tour is free but you need to book in advance as is very popular. We showed up at 10am with 8 other people to meet our Hostess, Gloria and driver, Werner. The tour takes you around Armidale viewing various landmarks for 2.5 hours ( or 3+ in our case because Gloria had more stories to tell) The historic landmarks are very interesting but it is the humorous stories that go with them that give them a local flavour and make you want to spend more time in Armidale. Gloria was hilarious and the time passed very quickly. They have a number of wonderful churches, Railroad Museum, Aboriginal Center, and University of New England. We would highly recommend that anyone spending a few days in Armidale book this tour. We enjoyed a Pub lunch across from the Tourist Info with coupons from the tour with another couple, Don and Janice, from the tour. We did some shopping in the afternoon and returned to campsite for dinner. The trees are all just starting to change to their autumn colours and are beautiful.

Wednesday April 6th saw us venture East on the Waterfall Way. We loosely followed a scenic drive route we had picked up at the Tourist Info Centre. Our first stop was Baker Creek Falls which was on a gravel road off the main highway. Good lookout point and the falls have 3 stages. Not too much water in them but still quite scenic.

From there we travelled on to the Wollomombi and Chandler Falls. The Wollomombi are the second highest falls in Australia and quite impressive. We did a challenging walk down to the Chandler Lookout which never did seem to actually find. It was about 2Km each way with a steep descent complete with switchbacks. If the way down was challenging let's just say the way back up was no easier. Our legs were feeling the burn!
Proceeded from there to New England National Park and Point Lookout. About 15Km of dirt road which was quite wet on the day. Beautiful drive in with amazing vegetation. You feel like you have entered a horror moving or something with the darkness and moss hanging off of everything. Had lunch at the summit which has a nice enclosed eating area with fireplace and reasonable toilets. Took the short 500m walk to the two lookouts but we were completely closed in with clouds and light rain. As you can see from the picture we could barely see 20 feet in front of us at lookout. Apparently on a clear day you can see 70Km right out to the coast. We may return some day to try again. It was worth the trip just for the walk and drive.

Drove to Ebor Falls from the New England National Park. Had cleared up a bit and we got good views and pictures from both view points. Make sure if you go that you go to both the upper and lower falls lookouts. Very different views but both good with very short walks to viewing platforms. There is a 700m paved walkway between them for those who want the exercise. We drove between them on this occassion.

We returned to Armidale in late afternoon and stopped at a car wash as the Pajero was filthy from our New England Park drive. Sandra and I enjoyed the last rays of sunshine at the caravan and had a toast to her Dad, Ed on the 6th anniversary of his passing. "Here's Luck!"

We charged up the batteries with the generator and stored most our camping gear for the trip in the morning to Tamworth.