Tang of the Tasman Sea by Magi Nams

Author:Magi Nams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: New Zealand travel guides, books about New Zealand, travel Australia & Oceania, family travel adventures, traveler and explorer biographies, New Zealand, travel books
Publisher: Leaf Rain Books
Published: 2015-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

April 16

Like a cleaver splitting a lush fruit, the track we parked on last evening splits our world into two realms. We have the wild exoticism of parrots in the mist and the fenced domesticity of beef calves destined for slaughter.

After the boys awaken, we drive to nearby Ebor Falls picnic area in Guy Fawkes River National Park, where patches of sunlight warm the cool, humid air.

While I prepare breakfast, Dainis perches on a barricade post in full sun, book in hand. Jānis attends a small fire he built in a fire pit, using sticks he gathered last evening. We feel at peace. The open, subalpine forest of snow gums and black sally beckons us to walk endlessly. The dull roar of Ebor Falls repeatedly draws us to the edge of a cliff alongside Guy Fawkes River. In trees at the cliff top, male and female red wattlebirds flutter warily from branch to branch, a droplet of pink flesh (wattle) dangling from their cheeks. In morning mist, Ebor Falls gleams like a necklace of silver strands tossed over the edge of a rocky table seen through frosted glass.

After sunshine teases away the mist, we stroll upstream to Upper Ebor Falls. Guy Fawkes River curves serenely through gentle slopes and open woodland before it reaches the falls. Then it roars over a black cliff, its waters pounding down over basalt columns – both the cliff and columns are remnants of a volcanic eruption eighteen million years ago.[23]

Image

Upper Ebor Falls

In late morning, we drive out of the dry hills surrounding Ebor Falls toward our destination for the day, Dorrigo National Park and its rainforest, 50 kilometres to the east and 550 kilometres north of Sydney. When we descend out of the hills, the highway leads us through lush farmland framed by tall shelterbelts, populated by dairy herds, and composed of red soil like that of Canada’s Prince Edward Island.

The town of Dorrigo is quiet on this Easter Monday. Our presence seems to cheer the Four Square Supermarket cashier and the national park receptionist. We picnic outside the Dorrigo Rainforest Centre in the park and laugh at Australian brush-turkeys that skulk at the rainforest edge and race across open lawn surrounding picnic tables. The black-feathered birds are the size of small turkeys and sport bare red heads and necks, as well as unusual, sideways-flattened tails. Behind them, the rainforest exudes the aura of a wild animal, crouched and waiting.

When we enter the forest, a yellow carabean tree dwarfs Dainis and Jānis as they tuck themselves into recesses in its massive trunk. The tree’s leafy canopy is fifty-five metres above the ground, higher even than that of the giant kauri Tāne Mahuta in New Zealand’s Waipoua Forest. As we follow the Wonga Walk rainforest path to Crystal Showers Falls, we meet other woody strangers identified by interpretive signs: tamarind, with its yellowish bark and feathery leaves; fragrant and furrow-barked sassafras; flame tree, which in spring or summer sheds its leaves and instead is cloaked with red flowers; and red corkwood.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.