0605 The goal revealed

WE HAD come up through Kendall to to Comboyne, then taken the Innes View road, and finally been directed back to the turn off to the Wingham Road. We arrived there hot on the heels of two ladies in a black Lexus, who had earlier been following us the wrong way.

There was a sign pointing to Ellensborough Falls, and it said, "19 km" -- and we could see it was dirt road most, if not all, of the way.

I looked at the fuel gauge. By now it was indicating that we had a quarter of a tank left.

I did some quick and anxious mental calculations. Perhaps we had 70 km worth of petrol, which would easily take us the 38 km to the falls and back to this corner, as well as the 4 or 5 km back into Comboyne.

Or perhaps we had only enough fuel to take us 50 km, and that could be a problem if I wasn't reading that 1/4 full indication accurately.

But, surely, if people are needing fuel for 40 to 60 km, there would be fuel near the falls. After all, I did remember noticing that there was some kind of kiosk near the falls. So I decided we would proceed.

It was a bumpy and dusty ride, and sometimes scary, when I would drive from a brightly lit section of roadway into a darkly shaded bend, where the dust on the screen put me into a complete white-out. Sometimes I couldn't even tell which direction the road turned in!

But, at last, we were there. And it certainly is spectacular! The fall is no Niagara. The flow is narrow, but certainly falls a long way.

It is almost impossible to get a decent photograph from anywhere on the lookout platform. Even using my wide-angle attachment, which gives around the equivalent to a 22mm lens at 35mm size, I couldn't get what I wanted.

All you can do is your best...

These photographs show what I could get of the Falls.

Left is the full visible length of the drop -- you can just see the pool at the bottom that the water falls into. The next photograph shows the pool itself at the bottom of the fall.

At the top of this post is a view along the valley.

Once we had had a look we couldn't see any way for us both to take the walk to the bottom of the falls, and I didn't particularly want to leave Chris in the car while I took the walk, so we started heading back.

Fortunately, petrol was available at the little general store in the township gathered around the falls. I was taken by the lassiandra tree in the yard of this store, shown in the next photograph. We bought some flavoured milk and a couple of sausage rolls for afternoon tea, and then continued back to Comboyne.

The final post for Thursday 6th takes us back to Port Macquarie through Wauchope.