The rainforest creek we are following, has suddenly become gorge-like. Its sides are bare and sloping rock. The water is deep and black. Dense forest lines the steep valley slopes on either side.

As we swim behind our packs, cicada noise pulsates in deafening crescendos. A flock of wonga pigeons takes flight across the narrow band of sky above. At the end of the pool we drag our water logged packs onto a rocky beach. Ten metres further on, we repeat the entire process, throwing ourselves into the next pool as we struggle our way through day three of our adventure.
***
This blog post is the story of one of our favourite wilderness walks ever - following Washpool Creek, through the middle of Washpool National Park in northern New South Wales, travelling from the creek’s headwaters through remote rainforest to the other end of the park, 35 kilometres away. With no tracks to follow, and just the creek to guide us, it quite literally immersed us in a rugged wilderness experience.
But this is an old story, and an old adventure (we completed the walk in December, 2012). So why post it now?
Apart from the fact it is an inspiring adventure, it strikes me that the world needs to know about the benefits and beauty of conservation. Saving Washpool's rainforest wilderness from logging was a hard fought battle. It was worth it. I have never experienced such an obviously untouched, ancient forest and it was spectacular. The difference was noticeable and deeply affecting. Now, there seems a resurgence in government sanctioned logging across many parts of Australia. It is timely to remember, reminisce, and give thanks for what has been saved. It is timely to fight for that which is still threatened.
By day three of this walk, swimming the long pools of the creek was nothing new. We had been soaking wet from the moment we stepped out of the car at Coombadjha camp ground, the main visitor access point for Washpool National Park off the Gwydir Highway, 60 km west of Grafton. As is the want of rainforests, it was raining as we searched around the edge of Coombadjha campground for our starting point - an old logging road that we would follow towards the headwaters of Washpool Creek which lay in the next valley north. Years of regrowth made it tricky to find, and made it a slow and scrappy route. For the first few hours, we pushed through a slalom run of young calicoma saplings, climbing around log falls that were a mess of vines and broken branches.
When Washpool National Park came into existence in 1983, in a bold move immediately after the park was declared, all these forest roads were closed and the forestry access bridge over Coombadjha Creek was demolished. The wilderness was effectively cut off, thus preserving and isolating the heart of Washpool’s remarkably pristine, untouched forest. It was into this heart we walked.
Once on the headwaters of Washpool Creek, progress became easier. High in the creek's catchment, we came across a small cascade, twisting and dropping in a series of steps and ledges. After this, the creek flattened out, flanked by old rainforest dotted with massive Corkwoods, Rosewoods and Carabeans, all straight as gun barrels as they pierced their way in a direct and unwavering line to the sun. Underfoot, a carpet of hard water ferns and maidenhair and around us dripping bangalow palms.
On day 1 and day 2, we walked, waded and scrambled down the creek and drew further and further away from our starting point, but closer to another of this park’s controversial mysteries. Bill Haydon, known locally as the ‘Cedar King’, disappeared in this very wilderness back in 1964. According to legend, at the northern end of the Washpool wilderness, Haydon was minding his main logging camp while two other workers were out overnight hand-felling a cedar in a particularly steep gully. When the workers returned next morning they found the camp fire still warm and Haydon’s abandoned mug of tea sitting on a nearby stump. Despite a large organized search, Haydon, an experienced bushman, was never seen again and his body was never found.
(For more information about Bill Haydon there is a book, launched in 2009, co-written by one of his granddaughters. www.billhaydon.com.au/index.html)
We walked north towards this mystery and the wilderness that hid it. Our shoes and shorts were wet through from day one's rain and so we just went sloshing into the creek where crossings were needed. We took our first full swim early on day two as there was no easier way around the increasingly deep pools.
Near the confluence of Washpool and Pi Pi Creeks, the cicadas proved deafeningly loud in the growing heat and humidity. We could not speak for the noise. So, we walked in the moment itself: balancing from rock to rock, pausing to catch the movement of a platypus in a deep pool. The forest flats either side of the creek made for beautiful walking - wandering through forest that was scattered with impressive emergents: Blue Gums, Brush Boxes and Tallowood, some reaching 70 to 80 metres in height, towering above the rainforest understorey. As the creek began widening it was lined with smooth, round boulders that proved perfect for hopping across. But, at times, the lomandra along the banks grew so thickly it was difficult to see the next step. So focused was Caz out front, jumping from rock to rock, he was forced to make a mid-air detour to avoid the fat sleek body of a red-bellied black snake, neck flared, mouth open, before it also frantically slithered its escape.
Mid-afternoon, day two, and the humidity finally broke itself apart. It rained, then it poured. We stood patiently under the meagre protection of some Bangalow palms unable to do anything but bear it; no worse off than the endangered giant barred frog we unexpectedly disturbed under one of the fallen fronds at our feet.
Each night we seemed to battle rain and the constantly dripping rainforest, working hard to make sure our essential warm clothes and food all stayed dry. Our second campsite overlooked a peaceful deep pool that was home to another platypus. In a break between showers we managed to get down to the water’s edge in the last evening light and watched it surface closer and closer. It swam to within a few metres, took a good long look at us, then, like a magic trick, it disappeared for good.
By day 3 we were right in the guts of the Washpool wilderness and the creek had begun to feel like our guide, leading us through its ancient, living landscape. Unfortunately, first thing in the morning it leads us straight into a huge block up. Truck-sized boulders, jumbled together, choked the valley and stopped us in our tracks. After exploring options, we were forced to climb a steep tongue of rock into the forest, then slowly and carefully traverse a steep slope. Getting back to the creek proved tricky. After a few false starts and some clambering in a precariously loose gully we were reunited with Washpool Creek.
At this point, the low rain clouds of the past two days finally broke up and we got our first expansive views of the surrounding valley. This was when I suddenly became aware of the deep, wild place our little creek has brought us to. The sides of the valley rose 500 metres above. We looked up into the hills longingly and greedily, wishing we had more time, more food, with so much to explore. It was mid-afternoon, and we paused on a large gravel beach in the middle of the creek admiring the spectacular scenery. But, it was decision time: should we push on or pitch camp early in this pretty spot and enjoy it?
Hoping the dry weather would hold, we decided to keep walking for another half an hour. But, as is often the case with wilderness adventures, two hours later we were still going. This is where Washpool Creek narrowed in and turned to test us. The sides became steep and rocky. There was not a campsite to be found and we were forced on and on.
Emerging from a string of long pools and long swims, we faced yet another block-up of giant boulders. They formed a seemingly impenetrable wall of stone across the creek. It was past 4pm and fatigue had set in. We'd been going since 7:30am - rock hopping, swimming, climbing, scrambling and generally exhausting our bodies. At the water’s edge I spied a small patch of gravel nestled between the sheer rocky bank and the creek boulders. It suddenly looked extremely appealing. The usual afternoon rain had not materialized and we were eager to take the small miracle and dry out what we could. All in all, the beach we stood on probably covered five square metres and the gravel patch was literally the same size as our tent. With the long pool and gorge behind us and the big block up ahead, we felt we had lucked it. We pitched the tent and stripped off, laid out wet things, slapped at the increasingly numerous march flies, picked off the leeches, and sat on a rock eating snacks and staring vacantly at each other too exhausted to talk.
Our first definitive landmark appeared early the next day. Oorooroo Creek, feeding in from the west, was the first chance to define our progress. No wonder we had been exhausted the night before. Given we reached Oorooroo at around 10am, we must have covered at least eight river kilometres the day before. Thanks to dry conditions, we were ahead of schedule. In our wonder at having made it to that point so early in the day, we celebrated by taking a long morning tea and sat ourselves down on sunny rocks. The first water gums had begun to appear and cabbage tree palms now infiltrated the rainforest banks.
Munching on some scroggin, I swatted at the incessant march flies and watched their corpses float in little eddies and currents at our feet when Caz nudged me and pointed to a patch of pretty rainforest on the other side. He had suddenly noticed two red cedars quietly standing amongst the jumble of trees. They were straight, tallish, not record breakers but girthy, shaggy headed, and they reminded me that this was wilderness in which Bill Haydon was lost. Here, somewhere around the side creeks of Oorooroo and Willowie, the forest had beckoned.
We still had to pass the more major side creek, Willowie Creek, then another day and a half of walking before we reached the bridge that would mark the end of our adventure. But, staring at those red cedar at Oorooroo Creek I was overwhelmed by a feeling of wonder and a desire for more of the Washpool wilderness.
I began to appreciate Bill Haydon’s disappearance all those years ago. I, too, was beginning to succumb to the lure of Washpool; entranced by its beauty - the creek, the swimming and rock hopping, the sounds of cicada and distant unseen birds. The valley remained full of things to be discovered. Could I easily do the same? Leave my steaming cup of tea on a rock, wander off into this wilderness - follow Washpool’s enchantment, never to be seen again.
But this is an old story, and an old adventure (we completed the walk in December, 2012). So why post it now?
***
By day three of this walk, swimming the long pools of the creek was nothing new. We had been soaking wet from the moment we stepped out of the car at Coombadjha camp ground, the main visitor access point for Washpool National Park off the Gwydir Highway, 60 km west of Grafton. As is the want of rainforests, it was raining as we searched around the edge of Coombadjha campground for our starting point - an old logging road that we would follow towards the headwaters of Washpool Creek which lay in the next valley north. Years of regrowth made it tricky to find, and made it a slow and scrappy route. For the first few hours, we pushed through a slalom run of young calicoma saplings, climbing around log falls that were a mess of vines and broken branches.
When Washpool National Park came into existence in 1983, in a bold move immediately after the park was declared, all these forest roads were closed and the forestry access bridge over Coombadjha Creek was demolished. The wilderness was effectively cut off, thus preserving and isolating the heart of Washpool’s remarkably pristine, untouched forest. It was into this heart we walked.
Once on the headwaters of Washpool Creek, progress became easier. High in the creek's catchment, we came across a small cascade, twisting and dropping in a series of steps and ledges. After this, the creek flattened out, flanked by old rainforest dotted with massive Corkwoods, Rosewoods and Carabeans, all straight as gun barrels as they pierced their way in a direct and unwavering line to the sun. Underfoot, a carpet of hard water ferns and maidenhair and around us dripping bangalow palms.
On day 1 and day 2, we walked, waded and scrambled down the creek and drew further and further away from our starting point, but closer to another of this park’s controversial mysteries. Bill Haydon, known locally as the ‘Cedar King’, disappeared in this very wilderness back in 1964. According to legend, at the northern end of the Washpool wilderness, Haydon was minding his main logging camp while two other workers were out overnight hand-felling a cedar in a particularly steep gully. When the workers returned next morning they found the camp fire still warm and Haydon’s abandoned mug of tea sitting on a nearby stump. Despite a large organized search, Haydon, an experienced bushman, was never seen again and his body was never found.
(For more information about Bill Haydon there is a book, launched in 2009, co-written by one of his granddaughters. www.billhaydon.com.au/index.html)
We walked north towards this mystery and the wilderness that hid it. Our shoes and shorts were wet through from day one's rain and so we just went sloshing into the creek where crossings were needed. We took our first full swim early on day two as there was no easier way around the increasingly deep pools.
Near the confluence of Washpool and Pi Pi Creeks, the cicadas proved deafeningly loud in the growing heat and humidity. We could not speak for the noise. So, we walked in the moment itself: balancing from rock to rock, pausing to catch the movement of a platypus in a deep pool. The forest flats either side of the creek made for beautiful walking - wandering through forest that was scattered with impressive emergents: Blue Gums, Brush Boxes and Tallowood, some reaching 70 to 80 metres in height, towering above the rainforest understorey. As the creek began widening it was lined with smooth, round boulders that proved perfect for hopping across. But, at times, the lomandra along the banks grew so thickly it was difficult to see the next step. So focused was Caz out front, jumping from rock to rock, he was forced to make a mid-air detour to avoid the fat sleek body of a red-bellied black snake, neck flared, mouth open, before it also frantically slithered its escape.
Mid-afternoon, day two, and the humidity finally broke itself apart. It rained, then it poured. We stood patiently under the meagre protection of some Bangalow palms unable to do anything but bear it; no worse off than the endangered giant barred frog we unexpectedly disturbed under one of the fallen fronds at our feet.
Each night we seemed to battle rain and the constantly dripping rainforest, working hard to make sure our essential warm clothes and food all stayed dry. Our second campsite overlooked a peaceful deep pool that was home to another platypus. In a break between showers we managed to get down to the water’s edge in the last evening light and watched it surface closer and closer. It swam to within a few metres, took a good long look at us, then, like a magic trick, it disappeared for good.
***
By day 3 we were right in the guts of the Washpool wilderness and the creek had begun to feel like our guide, leading us through its ancient, living landscape. Unfortunately, first thing in the morning it leads us straight into a huge block up. Truck-sized boulders, jumbled together, choked the valley and stopped us in our tracks. After exploring options, we were forced to climb a steep tongue of rock into the forest, then slowly and carefully traverse a steep slope. Getting back to the creek proved tricky. After a few false starts and some clambering in a precariously loose gully we were reunited with Washpool Creek.
At this point, the low rain clouds of the past two days finally broke up and we got our first expansive views of the surrounding valley. This was when I suddenly became aware of the deep, wild place our little creek has brought us to. The sides of the valley rose 500 metres above. We looked up into the hills longingly and greedily, wishing we had more time, more food, with so much to explore. It was mid-afternoon, and we paused on a large gravel beach in the middle of the creek admiring the spectacular scenery. But, it was decision time: should we push on or pitch camp early in this pretty spot and enjoy it?
Hoping the dry weather would hold, we decided to keep walking for another half an hour. But, as is often the case with wilderness adventures, two hours later we were still going. This is where Washpool Creek narrowed in and turned to test us. The sides became steep and rocky. There was not a campsite to be found and we were forced on and on.
Emerging from a string of long pools and long swims, we faced yet another block-up of giant boulders. They formed a seemingly impenetrable wall of stone across the creek. It was past 4pm and fatigue had set in. We'd been going since 7:30am - rock hopping, swimming, climbing, scrambling and generally exhausting our bodies. At the water’s edge I spied a small patch of gravel nestled between the sheer rocky bank and the creek boulders. It suddenly looked extremely appealing. The usual afternoon rain had not materialized and we were eager to take the small miracle and dry out what we could. All in all, the beach we stood on probably covered five square metres and the gravel patch was literally the same size as our tent. With the long pool and gorge behind us and the big block up ahead, we felt we had lucked it. We pitched the tent and stripped off, laid out wet things, slapped at the increasingly numerous march flies, picked off the leeches, and sat on a rock eating snacks and staring vacantly at each other too exhausted to talk.
Our first definitive landmark appeared early the next day. Oorooroo Creek, feeding in from the west, was the first chance to define our progress. No wonder we had been exhausted the night before. Given we reached Oorooroo at around 10am, we must have covered at least eight river kilometres the day before. Thanks to dry conditions, we were ahead of schedule. In our wonder at having made it to that point so early in the day, we celebrated by taking a long morning tea and sat ourselves down on sunny rocks. The first water gums had begun to appear and cabbage tree palms now infiltrated the rainforest banks.
Munching on some scroggin, I swatted at the incessant march flies and watched their corpses float in little eddies and currents at our feet when Caz nudged me and pointed to a patch of pretty rainforest on the other side. He had suddenly noticed two red cedars quietly standing amongst the jumble of trees. They were straight, tallish, not record breakers but girthy, shaggy headed, and they reminded me that this was wilderness in which Bill Haydon was lost. Here, somewhere around the side creeks of Oorooroo and Willowie, the forest had beckoned.
We still had to pass the more major side creek, Willowie Creek, then another day and a half of walking before we reached the bridge that would mark the end of our adventure. But, staring at those red cedar at Oorooroo Creek I was overwhelmed by a feeling of wonder and a desire for more of the Washpool wilderness.
I began to appreciate Bill Haydon’s disappearance all those years ago. I, too, was beginning to succumb to the lure of Washpool; entranced by its beauty - the creek, the swimming and rock hopping, the sounds of cicada and distant unseen birds. The valley remained full of things to be discovered. Could I easily do the same? Leave my steaming cup of tea on a rock, wander off into this wilderness - follow Washpool’s enchantment, never to be seen again.
Note: This trip was done Christmas 2012. Unfortunately in February 2013 floods washed out the access bridge to the northern end of Washpool National Park and it remains closed until further notice. See the Parks website for details. It is unlikely this bridge will be replaced, but it may be possible to add an extra days walk to reach the access road. Contact NPWS for information.
The battle for Washpool: At the forefront of the battle against logging in Washpool National Park was the Grafton Branch of the National Parks Association (NPA) which was formed at the outset of the fight, in April 1980. They worked closely with conservation groups in Sydney and campaigned using stunning black and white images by renowned wilderness photographer Leo Meier. The campaign gained wide public attention following the broadcast of a Channel 10 documentary ‘The Battle for Washpool’ in May 1981, which featured the Colong Committee’s Milo Dunphy advocating the forest’s protection. The mood in the nearby town of Grafton was ugly at the time with several businesses in town refusing to serve those known to be members of the NPA and a violent confrontation was narrowly averted when the NPA held a meeting in the disputed area. The campaign was an important battle and an exciting win for wilderness conservation. Washpool Creek, then and now, is home NSW’s largest, continuous unlogged expanse of rainforest. It also contains the world’s largest coachwood rainforest.
Former President of the NPA, Peter Morgan, was once quoted in an old edition of the Colong Foundation bulletin celebrating the Washpool National Park’s 25th birthday: “Lying on a rock in the middle of Washpool Creek, in a new national park, was a magic moment… We still belong to the wilderness. We can find the closeness if we try. Even if we don’t we still have some lingering feeling that wilderness is important. We have to cherish what we have, not just for ourselves, and not just for our children… For the magic…"
Bushwalk.com: This is also our chance to introduce you to another amazing online bushwalking resource - Bushwalk.com Magazine, an electronic magazine for the wonderful bushwalk forum we often link to on this blog. Our adventure along Washpool Creek first appeared in the e-magazine in Volume 4 and you can search it out by visiting the Bushwalk Forum, look on the right-hand panel for a link to the magazine. You will no doubt find plenty of other great stories.
All images and words on this site are copyright of Craig Fardell and Christina Armstrong. It is illegal to sell, copy, or distribute images and text without permission. We thank you for your help in respecting the copyright of our work.
Always love reading your posts and checking the photos - thank you for the pleasure, insights and ideas for further adventures they provide. Feels like this area is your home patch. And appreciate your conservation sentiments, as well as promoting Bushwalking Australia e-mag - a bit of an under-recognised resource in many ways I feel.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the nice comments! And yes, Bushwalk e-mag is an amazing resource. Especially considering the voluntary hours that go into it!
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