Coffs Harbour To Brisbane Via The Dirt

From the Monday after the WRC, Daz Woods in his 01 Forester, Mary Horner 07 Forester XT, David Martin 05 Forester X, and trip leader Jan K, 97 Forester. Also we had Bob and Cindy in their Pajero, they had found out about the trip from the web site and decided to take up the Club’s free membership offer.  The plan was to travel to Brisbane via as many dirt tracks as possible. We stayed on an extra 2 nights at the hall that was our home for the rally. The first 2 days we spent exploring the tracks around Coffs. We found a whole range of tracks some easy, some steep and rocky. We also visited the Coramba Comms Tower lookout that had some great mountain and ocean views.

On the Tuesday we drove through Woolgoolga forest then on to Yuraygir N/P to where the WRC power stage was held, (it was the live TV stage) and then on to Pebbly Beach. To our surprise we spotted 4 emus near the track just before the beach. By chance we hit the beach right on low tide and we did the short 2 km drive north to the access track to the Pebbly Beach camp sites. At the creek only Jan and Daz drove across, it was quite deep and salty. Once over the creek the track led to the camp area. What a great out of the way spot, very similar to our Inskip Point and Islands.

Wednesday we set off to head north, first we bought some supplies and fuelled up. Around Bonville we hit the dirt, soon after we came across a partly washed out log bridge. After a talk we decided with a bit of road work we could guide each car over, on one of the big exposed logs. You had to put your left hand wheel on the big log, the right hand wheel stayed on the dirt. Bob was concerned about the extra weight of the Pajero but it was not a problem with everyone sailing over it. 

After the historic town of Bellingen, we turned off Waterfall Way and went back on the dirt doing a steep climb up the range. At one of the turns, dogs from a nearby house took a dislike to Jan’s red Forester. They chased and barked at him as he drove up the track. Making our way back to The Waterfall way we reached the bitumen at the bottom of the range just before Dorrigo, we stopped at Newell Falls one of many right beside the road. We visited the National Park centre at Dorrigo, did the tree top walk - even Jan felt safe doing it! Then we set off to do the walk to Crystal Falls where you cross a suspension bridge and follow the track that goes under a rock cave behind the falls. It is quite spectacular. 

In Dorrigo we topped up with fuel, visited the nearby Danger Falls and the “Lavatree” at the sewerage treatment works. It is a wooden frame in the shape of a tree with plants growing out of old dunnies. Our overnight stop was at Platypus Flats on the Nymboida River our first camping night. It is a nice spot. There is still unrepaired damage from this year’s floods.  After a cold night of around 5 degrees, to warm up the boys decided to dig out a buried park table. Also the Rangers said there are Platypus in the river, we had a look but could not find any.

From here we took more back tracks up the range, first we did the rocky Nymboida crossing without any problems. It was interesting country with dense timber and soil changes. We eventually hit the bitumen above the Nymboida Hydro power station. It was built way back in 1923 and has only 2 inlet pipes. From here we turned on to the old Grafton road that follows the Mann River for something like 90 kms. It is mainly good driving on a smooth deco granite surface. We stopped for lunch at a nice grassy area along side the river. To get there, we drove on a good short 4WD access track. Next stop was the old town of Dalmorton. A little further on was the hand dug 20 meter rock tunnel. It must have been hard dangerous work doing it. From here it was not far to our over night stop at the Mann River campground, where we found a good spot right beside the river.

It was another cold night of around 5 degrees. In the morning, we set off for Deepwater to top up and get some supplies. It was an interesting drive still on deco granite, through farmland and steep hills. On this track we reached our highest point of the trip around 1200 meters above sea level. We had to back track a few kilometres to pick up the track we needed to take us north over the range to the Rocky River. We eventually made it doing the river crossing without any problems. Everybody was relieved that we were able to get through, because it was all uncharted areas for us. We had a little more dirt road work to do, again on deco, before the final bitumen stretch back to Brisbane. Our final stop was for dinner in Beaudesert.

From here we said our goodbyes. What an interesting few days it had been travelling on as much dirt as we could between Coffs and Brisbane. Thanks to Jan for his hard work planning the trip and also to Daz and Mary for the backup with their Navmans. The tracks we took got us through.          

Dave Martin