Border Ranges National Park

Leaving Lismore we made our way to the Border Ranges National Park and camped in a very damp campsite at Sheep Station Creek. Not that it rained a lot, but the ground, and the trees were just all very "oozy"! Certainly the leeches liked the habitat, and more especially they like the habitat between Jed's two little toes! I guess that's what you get for having a very wide foot that hangs over the edge of your thongs?? I think he ended up getting about 5 leeches on him, and the final one managed to suck a reasonable amount of blood out of him. Lily only had the one on her - I think the screams deafened the rest, and they fled to another part of the park!

Campsite and waterfall at Sheep Station Creek Campsite

There was some beautiful country tho' and we drove along the ridge for some time on the following day, with a big "drop-off" each side of the road. And the valley opened up below us to the north, with Mount Warning being the highest point on the rim of this volcanic 'basin'.

For those of you familiar with the "Pinnacle" in the Grampians, we went to a similar sort of rocky outcrop along this ridge, also called the "Pinnacle" which had the potential to be an equally fantastic lookout over the valley below - however, the misty rain and fog was a bit limiting to the magnificent view, and again we had a fantastic view of 'white'. Jed of course had to try the 'stone throwing' thing off the side of the sheer drop to count how long it was till we heard the sound of it hitting the ground. It was actually quite a long drop, as the stone disappeared through the fog! And for the meteorologists amongst us, we saw a great example of the type of cloud 'up-lift', that makes orographic rainfall. The white streaks of warm, moist cloud were rushing past us, up and over the ridge to cool, condense and then create misty rain. Amazing to see it happening so close.

White 'edges' to this narrow neck of rock

We decided to head 'down hill' again and find some dryer ground and back towards the Gold Coast, but we weren't booked in their for a couple of days. After a few phone calls we were lucky enough to be able to get a site for the couple of nights prior to Easter at Tweed Heads. So we headed down hill through more steep and windy mountain roads and we went from the 'Hillbillie' style back-blocks around Nimbin and Murwillumbah, where many seek the alternative lifestyle, to the Tweed River and out to the very 'civilised' and built up beginning of the Gold Coast, in a matter of thirty, or forty kms.