Monday, 3 October 2016

Max at Wollomombi

Yesterday saw magnificent weather after a long cool and rather period. We had a cloudless sky, at least to start with, and it was warm for this time of year - early Spring. In fact, the temperature reached about 23C. Dot and I are hosting Max during the two weeks of school holidays and in the first week he spend a long time at the Armidale skate park with his local friend, Campbell. Fortunately, I was able to lure him away from his scooter and skate-board with a promise of rock-hopping at the top of Wollomombi Falls, one of the highest drops in the southern hemisphere amid spectacular gorge scenery. Campbell also came along for the 45km ride eastwards from Armidale and neither he nor Max were disappointed with the occasion. In fact, they'd love to go back, something I'll arrange this week if the weather 's good.

Well, here we are at one of the gorge lookouts en route to the Wollomombi river just before it roars over the lip of the tablelands into the deep gorge below. At 12 years of age, Max is catching me up in height! And the second image shows Max and Campbell at the same position.



Both wanted to sit on the railings behind, but I argued against that because one slip in their balance would have made headlines in the national press and destroyed my reputation! The next pictures show why. The first shows the railings' shadow looking downward into the gorge - a drop of maybe 300 m. There was nothing to stop either of the two kids if they fell backwards until they reached the bottom and I doubt they'd have survived!



This is, as you can see wild and empty country. We often see wedge-tailed eagles soaring around the cliff faces, but alas not on this occasion.


After posing for our pictures, we headed down some steep slopes and a final staircase until we reached the river bank. Looking upstream the river flowed serenely through lovely countryside. In the opposite direction, it began to tumble through rocky terrain to the top of the waterfall, which is not visible in these photos



And it was this downstream environment that caught Max and Campbell's attention as they roared off to explore the nooks and crannies of the rocky landscape, in the process leaping from one rock to another over fast-flowing water. Neither of them seemed the least bit scared about what they were doing, although I wondered what would happen if their footing failed and they fell into to water.






At the end of the rock-hopping, which took a fairly long time - maybe 30 minutes, Max cooled his feet off by padding in the Wollomombi river - and the water was far cooler than the ambient temperature.


After this we decided to return to the car-park rather than walk another couple of kilometres or so to the top of the neighbouring Chandler falls. I guess that by this time they were rather tired on their feet, although this didn't stop Max climbing a termite mound on the way up. Fortunately, the residents seemed to be asleep or dormant and they did not mass for an attack.


At this point I put my cap on backwards like theirs and we three kids ambled back to base trying to scare of any dingos (wild native dogs) that might have been about .

AS

1 comment:

Laura said...

Thank you for the spectacular photos Uncle Tony.