The plan was to head down the coast to call into a couple of beachside camps that held fond memories for us, and to do this before the Easter school holidays, and to then escape the crowds by heading inland and looping back towards the north and home in time for Easter.
The weather did not look promising, but we thought we'd take a look anyway. After all, how often are those weather forecasters 100% right?
Well they were this time. We arrived at a riverside camp at Coraki (between Casino and Woodburn) and set up before heading off for a walk and then back to the van for a coffee.
It started raining then and it never stopped for the two days and nights we were there.
It's a good job that the pub, only about 30 metres from where we were camped, was a friendly place with some great food and great prices. Seriously, this pub is highly recommended.
So, we decided to head west and get across the Great Dividing Range to some drier country and aimed the bonnet towards the Kwiambal National Park.
Getting in there was easy enough, although the 20km of dirt road was nastily corrugated in many spots, and the camping area we chose was almost deserted, giving us a choice of lots of spots on the Severn River's banks.
We chose one reasonably close to the spotlessly clean dunny and set up for the next four nights.
There was a fire ban in force so we had no camp fire, but that was no real hardship as the weather was warm and dry.
So what did we do there? Walk is the answer, following tracks around to some lookouts and enjoying the tranquility.
The walks were all reasonably well marked out and lead through a treed landscape that was just beautiful.
We walked to some lookouts that gave us views over different parts of the river. The one above shows a narrow gorge through which the river must boil when it is in flood.
All we saw were pools of water with only a trickle of flow.
Here's Karen looking healthy and gorgeous :)
And me, looking lopsided - I must find somewhere level to stand next time!
All the photos above show how rugged is the country through which this river runs. It must be a great sight when in flood.
One of the regular sights in any granite country in Australia are the balancing rocks. The weather erodes any boulder into a ball shape and leaves it sitting on a narrowing plinth, just balancing and looking like you'd be able to roll it down the hill with a push.
You can't of course, but it looks that way.
This was is about 6 metres high.
Walking back we left the high ridges with their views, but dusty tracks, and walked back along the river bank where it was accessible.
It's a beautiful place here. So peaceful with only the birds for company or the occasional fish rising.
Karen found herself a comfy rock to sit on and cooled her feet in the water.
Wildlife - there was a lot of wildlife in this Park with birds, grey kangaroos, wallaroos and goannas around all the time.
We were visited by two goannas (that we saw) no doubt scrounging for food, but each of them scooted up a tree if one of us stood up.
Can you see the one starting to climb the tree above?
Well, you couldn't miss this picture of him. He was about 1.3 metres long so he still has a lot of growing to do.
Another day we went for a walk to the MacIntyre River and found that is a similar state to the Severn, pretty dry with just pools of water and lots of boulders that show the power of the river when it is in flood.
Lots more balancing roacks, but as there have not been eroded over time, just created by the flooding river, they are not as rounded.
One of the marked walks takes you to "The Rockpool" which is an impressive size for a hole carved into the rock, but it seemed to be filled with highly silted water - not going to bother swimming there!
We moved on from Kwiambal with some great memories of a cracking Park, but also with a number of sand fly bites that were to irritate us for days and weeks afterwards.
We headed south, calling into Inverell for supplies, to a free camp at a spot called the Bundarra Lions Park.
This is a spot on the Gwydir River that is just a couple of klms from the town of Bundarra (with a great pub) and with a set of decent flushing toilets and water.
We picked a spot on the bank of the river close to an old friend of ours (we met her here a few years ago) and relaxed into life in the slow lane.
The sunset sky was spectacular.
This was our setup.
A closer look and from this pic you can see the river a couple of metres below us.
We stayed there just three nights as, apart from walking the couple of klms into the town to visit the pub (great food and very friendly) there isn't much to do beyond relaxing and reading a book.
So we packed up and headed off through Armidale to the Wollomombi National Park where we set up and then checked out the walks.
The pictures that follow show some of the walks and the views, but they can't capture the sheer beauty of the place.
From here we headed off to Nymboida where we camped next to a creek and then to Brooms Head where we found a spot in a beachside van park (with only intermittent rain) so we stayed and enjoyed a more traditional beach mini-break.
The pictures tell the story of the place and the walks we took.
Yeah - it's a beautiful place and (considering it was Easter) not too overcrowded.
