2004/02 New South Wales loop - Mount Buffalo |
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Dear All,
Part 2 New South Wales
Monday February 16th
The prime destination for this trip was Lightning Ridge and its opal mines. They are located in the north of New South Wales, almost into Queensland. We intended to get there by traveling up the mountains of the Great Dividing Range, using mainly routes that we hadn’t seen before and a few that we wanted to see again. For variety we planned to loop back to Victoria through the New South Wales outback.
Our trip started out on the wrong foot, though. I’d wanted to go up through the magnificent mountain ash forests of the Yarra Ranges to the north of Healesville, but the Maroondah Hwy was closed for construction. So, instead, we took the road through Toolangi, which is almost as pretty, with hillsides of towering gum trees. Actually, the Australians’ mountain ash is also a gum tree, quite different from the mountain ash that grows in North American back yards.
We were headed for Mount Buffalo national park, on the edge of the mountains, named for its shape not for any buffalos there. As usual, we arrived late in the day, and we threaded our way up the mountain and around the hairpin turns in the gloom beneath the trees.
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Mount Buffalo drive (1.36) |
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The campground is about halfway up the mountain, in the woods around Lake 
Catani. It seemed to be managed by the local ducks. As soon as we set up in a campsite we were joined by a duck who was clearly checking us out and asking to see the dinner menu. However, he was quickly ejected by a mama duck and her six full grown ducklings, who came marching into our site. We called them the Magnificent Seven. They set up house under the camper, and were
obviously waiting for us to start cooking. One of the ducklings was impatient enough that he tried to eat my toes, getting each one well into 
his beak.
Like many of our guests, they were disappointed by our eating schedule, as instead of cooking we went for a walk around the lake. It was well past sunset, but there was still enough light to avoid trees and the water.
We could make out something swimming in the lake that looked like one of our musk rats, and we found out next morning that, yes, Australia does have native water rats. [Now called rakali.]
Finding the bathroom in the dark was an adventure. When we found it, there was a chalked up sign that we read by torchlight “Watch out for snakes.” It didn’t say what we were to do if we were lucky enough to see one.
Tuesday February 17th
I went for an early run on a gorgeous still, clear morning, and found that running at 4400 ft is tough, even in Australia. The park is a beautiful place even though it was badly burned in last year’s fires. We had only intended to stay at the park for a few hours and then move on, but by the time we’d hiked to the gorge, and looked at the cliffs, and then climbed up to the monolith, we were so late that we decided to stay the night. Much of the park was black from the fires, but the undergrowth was growing back and the surviving trees were sprouting growth all over their trunks and branches. They looked diseased, but apparently it’s just their normal recovery from being burned.
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Monolith (4.37) |  |
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We hiked up to the Monolith, a single rock with a ladder attached, only to find that the park 
service had removed the ladder’s rungs “for safety”. Shinning up without the rungs seemed a bit too risky so I gave it a miss.
We thought the parrot in the picture was some new species, but realized eventually that it was a crimson rosella in the midst of its colour change. They start life in green and blue and end life in crimson and blue.
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We drove up to the top of the mountain, past the ski resort, dormant in the off-
season, and then took a short hike to the Horn, the mountain’s peak. It was guarded by hundreds of crows, who watched us climb up to their trees and then exploded into the sky in a big noisy crowd. The view to the east was spectacular, towards the dozens of peaks 
that make up the Snowy Mountains. We were heading in that direction the next day.
On the way down we took a side trip into the Old Galleries, a maze of giant rocks, where the trail goes over and under the rocks. Back at the campsite, the Magnificent Seven were glad to see us back, and they joined us for dinner.
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