The Tramline Walk

We move on through the park to the Tramline Walk.  Again this walk, described as easy, highlights the lack of maintenance in this park.  There turns out to be quite a bit of scrambling under and over fallen trees.  This would be ok for a younger hiker but for my dad recovering from serious illness, it is quite a bit more difficult.   We take it slowly and this time make a better attempt at avoiding the leaches.

The walk itself is very interesting.  It tracks the remnants of the old, original saw milling work and shows the traces of how they fell and moved the trees to waiting steam trains.  The forest floor shows the old wooden train tracks in places and the beginning of the train bridge over the rain-forest gully.  It is all made from ancient timbers.  It is set on the edge of a very steep hill, amongst very thick vegetation.   It is hard to believe that it is possible to fell and move wood under these circumstances today - let alone more than a hundred years ago.

My Dad is a good person to have along on this walk.  He is a very clever, mechanically minded person and is able to identify and translate the information signs into the remaining clues still evident on the rain-forest floor.

After a bit of a rest, we drive through the remaining road of the Nimboi-Binderay National Park and meet up with the road going back south to Dorrigo.  There are small villages of maybe 100 people along the way.  It is mostly farming country.  We stop and look at the remains of a ghost town now virtually gone.  It turns out to be the town that once received the steam trains full with ancient trees felled at the Tramline walk.  It starts to rain, and like the park itself, the air is filled with more bitey insects.

At the top of the range we stop and have lunch at Dangar Falls.  No insects.  It was wonderful.

Dangar Falls - Dorrigo