Dangar Falls
Wednesday 25th May 2022. Nauti Time 080
Anne took us out to the airport yesterday afternoon so we could pick up our hire car and pick up some goodies to take away with us. Rick had some work calls today so we didn’t get away until about 1pm. Fortunately the high country is very close and by about 2 we were wondering around this gorgeous quirky little town of Bellingen that had an amazing old commercial emporium with original brass lettered signage, pressed tin ceilings and curved wooden staircase. Now used as a general clothing retail space the Spence of the bygone era still remained in its authentic state. A quick lunch and a wander through the shops of Main Street before we continued on to our destination of Dorrigo along waterfall way. There were a lot of road works due to the tremendous amount of rain recently that has caused landslides and major water laden pot holes. I’m glad we went for a medium SUV as a small Corolla would have certainly struggled.
We arrived to our basic little cabin an immediately noticed the temperature had dropped about 10 degrees. After unloading the car and putting the heater on we went to explore the township. This took all of 10 minutes as it’s a very small town but bonus points for 3 op shops! Unfortunately all were closed! The most striking and controversial thing about the town was the so called Cloud installation. This monstrosity of a sculpture erected over the Main Street that had no cohesion or relatedness to the town what so ever. If you get the locals talking about it, it is obviously and extremely touchy point as council spent hundreds of thousands getting this thing actually built in WA and transported and erected in the town. We originally thought it was donated but when we got to the bottom of the story the money had been donated and this monstrosity was actually commissioned! At least it gives the town a talking point often leading to a very heated discussion! Rick and I decided it was in fact a landing platform for alien space ships!
Landing platform for aliens
We had a bit of time before sunset so we headed to our first waterfall called Dangar falls just 5 minutes out of town. It’s hard to describe waterfalls but hopefully the pictures will give you an idea how spectacular they are. This one was like a mini Niagara Falls. The water rushing over a long semi circular escarpment down into a very circular ravine that was once the center of a volcano. In fact Dorrigo is on a plateau of the outer rim of a volcano and all the water falls and valleys here are from the eroded core of the volcano. Quite fascinating.
Dangar falls from above
We walked to the floor of the ravine and were wishing that it was about 20 degrees warmer so we could jump into the magical large pool at the base of the falls. But as the sun was quickly descending and the temperature plummeting we made a haste retreat back to our cabin for an hour or so to warm up before enjoying a meal at the local pub.
