D
IRECTLY OVERHEAD, on outstretched
wings, a wedge-tailed eagle f loats. It’s just
a metre or two away and, if I reach up,
I can almost stroke its broad golden chest.
Nearby, a high-country river plum-
mets once, and then again, over the double drop of a
mighty waterfall. It pummels a deep pool 100m below
and in the doing spreads a shimmering mist across the
rock-strewn gorge. The eagle turns, glances down at me,
and glides away. It rides the updraughts of a wind that
ruff les the canopy of a rainforest, whose inhabitant species
are as old as the hills it covers.
In this tangle, towering trees stand dressed in coats of
the softest, emerald-green moss. These are the ancients- descendants of another place, another time. This is
Gondwana country, and, like my soaring feathered
friend, it’s breathtaking.
Dorrigo National Park
In the hinterland behind Coffs Harbour, on the New
South Wales mid-north coast, sits one of the country’s
40 World Heritage-listed Gondwana rainforest sites.
Here the trees are bent and bowed, gnarled and knobbly,
smeared in lichen, and dripping with vines.54 Australian Geographic
Just an hour’s drive south-west of Coffs along
Waterfall Way, Dorrigo National Park is one of the most
accessible places to explore these forests. Centuries-old
Antarctic beech rub shoulders with prehistoric tree ferns
and palms, and you can wander on well-maintained
tracks and boardwalks admiring their grandeur.
As we meander along Crystal Shower Falls walk
(3.5km return), George Bradford, the NSW Parks and
Wildlife Service (NPWS) supervisor at Dorrigo Rain-
forest Centre, explains the importance of these forests.
“Gondwana Rainforests of Australia include the most
extensive areas of subtropical rainforest in the world,” he
says. “Extending from north of Newcastle [a two-hour
drive north of Sydney] to the south-east of Queensland,
these World Heritage-listed areas are thriving with plants
and wildlife and are an outstanding example of the major
stages of Earth’s evolution.”
When Australia finally broke from the supercontinent
Gondwana, it took with it one of Earth’s greatest
collections of ancient plants and animals. As it drifted
further north it grew hotter and drier, forcing the wet
and often dark forest that covered most of its surface to
retreat to the mountains and damp corners of the east.
Tod ay, Aust ra l ia is home to t races of th is or ig ina l a rk.
While many plants from that time are found on theDorrigo NP’s Skywalk provides
visitors with the perfect perspective
of the tangled rainforest canopy.
Facing east, it also showcases the
Bellinger Valley with its densely
wooded hills and lush paddocks
that meet the ocean.