I decided to head up to Middle Brother National Park today in search of a waterfall. Middle Brother is situated just South of the coastal township of Laurieton.
After a short drive from Forster I arrived just on 8:30am. The air is so incredibly fresh and clean up here – I soaked it in for a few minutes before beginning my hike up the creek. I was in search of a 50 metre high waterfall which, after reading old NPWS documents and studying Google and Topographic Maps, I believed existed within the Park and having the weather prediction of a clear day, I knew I had the whole day available to explore as much of the area as I wanted.
The gumboots and insect repellent went on and my journey commenced.
Stony Creek Falls
First stop was to Stony Creek Falls, a place I’ve photographed before but didn’t get all the angles I had hoped for. This was the first evident sign that the flow of water had dropped a bit since my last visit, despite the recent smothering of H²O we had only a few days prior.
The upstream trek took me into dense rainforest that began to close in all around me. It was beautiful – a gentle flow of water over a golden pebble creek bed, with deep green palm trees and vines hovering all above me in complete isolation.
I rounded a bend in the creek and came across a large, flat rocky platform occupying the width of the creek, with an S-shaped set of cascades to one side, where I took my first break and photographed the area in almost pure silence, if it weren’t for the yoga-pose inducing trickling sound of the water!
I slowly made my way upstream, peeking down various side-streams, wondering if the supposedly hidden waterfall may be just around the bend of any one of these. The gumboots were showing there true value at this point, as most of the creek bank was overgrown with thick scrub so I had to walk in the creek itself in order to make any headway.
A couple more cascades found and numerous trees that could closely compete with the largest Blackbutt Tree in Australia, I came to an impasse in the form of a very deep and very beautiful forest pool surrounded on both sides by 3 metre vertical rock faces. It was probably a good thing I couldn’t go any further as I was already 3 hours in to the rainforest. The place was fairly impressive to say the least. I spent about 45 minutes here just taking in the view and looking around for various compositions to best show off the beauty of the place.
It’s important to note that this area was considered an important cultural location to the local Birpai people. I wondered what significance this beautiful place might have had to the traditional owners of this land.
Common sense kicked in and I decided to start the 3 hour trek back to where I’d parked. It didn’t end up taking as long going back as I wasn’t stopping every 5 minutes photographing every pebble and tree this time. A couple more photos grabbed on the way back to the car, then comfortably on the road for the 50 minute drive home to a shower and beer. I’ll definitely be returning when mother nature decides to give us a healthy dose of rain.
Below are some photographs taken on the hike. Enjoy,
Anthony.
