FROM THE TABLELANDS TO THE SEA
THREE WEDGE-TAILED EAGLES have hit the jackpot. A relentless breeze funnelling up from the vast crack in the earth at my feet is generating a turbocharged updraft that the raptors have hooked into. Spiralling skyward at an incredible speed, they’re soon specks against the blue-grey scud. Then they spear eastward and vanish.
I’m at Steep Drop Falls, in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. Standing here on the edge of the New England Tableland, in north-eastern NSW, I can see over a World Heritage-listed wilderness of gorges and ridges that reaches to the eastern horizon.
The chasm that plunges 500m from my toes joins Rowleys Gorge; the stream in it, Rowleys Creek, is among the myriad waters that cross the tableland, weave through pastureland and cascade into gorge country. They eventually merge to become the Macleay River, a 298km-long watercourse that escapes from the wilds 50km to the east at a locality called Georges Junction. From there it widens and slows and, on reaching its floodplain near Kempsey, stubbornly resists human meddling until it enters the Tasman Sea at the town of South West Rocks.
I’m about to explore the Macleay from here to the sea with photographer Don Fuchs. Sam Doak, a senior ranger with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), has guided us to this cliff-edge. Sam’s authoritative manner is tempered by an easy smile and ready laugh. “All around the lip of the New England Tableland you’ve got these waterfalls going over the edge,” he says. “Most visitors go to three falls – Apsley Falls south of here, Dangars Falls south-east of Armidale, and Wollomombi Falls about 40km east of Armidale.” Adventurers go deeper into the park, he adds, some to bushwalk along the river, others to kayak or canoe to Georges Junction. The park contains some of Australia’s most extensive and dramatic gorge systems. It mostly lies inside the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, inscribed in 1986 to protect wilderness, plant communities and native animals.
Don and I drive north through farmland in our Isuzu, making for Salisbury Waters, one of the Macleay’s lesser headwaters, and Dangars Falls. On the way, we inspect a gum tree with two large scars in it, made by Aboriginal people cutting bark for shields, canoes or containers.
The traditional owners of the Macleay headwaters region are the Anaiwan, a dialect group of the Dunghutti nation, which once occupied the entire Macleay River system. When Europeans arrived, many Aboriginal people fled into the gorges, though some chose to
