An orgy in Dutchness, Dorrigo and New England

This morning another short spell in the creek with Saskia and Marit, then onwards into Coffs Harbour and "Holland Down Under"! Well it seemed only fitting after our Swedish / Scottish orgy in Logan. It turned out this was a small exhibit of hand-made fibreglass replicas of Dutch buildings, including the Martinitoren in Groningen, made by an emigré from Amsterdam who must have been to Madurodam quite a lot. His son did a clog-making demonstration and we (being those who had travelled farthest to be here) got to keep the "raw" clog, which needs a week to dry and should be OK for export by the time we leave Australia! We had genuine Dutch-style coffee and poffertjes at Big Oma's Café. De Ruijter muisjes were for sale in the shop (blue and white half price - I guess the Australians are suspicious...) and the stroopwafels were really tempting. In fact there were many Dutch things for sale there that one couldn't find in Sweden.

We drove on south on the Pacific Highway but on an impulse decided to turn inland to visit Dorrigo National Park and the Skyway, a short walk on a platform over the top of the rainforest. This was followed by a longer walk down on the rainforest floor, which was different from the tropical rainforest up in Daintree, but in a way that was difficult to define. The last stretch of road up to Dorrigo ascended 750m in 14km. Having come inland we couldn't easily return to the coast so decided to continue down the New England Tablelands to Armidale. This took us through some spectacular scenery and dramatic changes of landscape and climate. Until Dorrigo it was fairly lush, once up at 760m above sea level it turned into a passable approximation of the Lake District (perhaps a bit greener) but by 50km further on the temperature had dropped to 5°C (from 20°C on the coast) and it resembled a British winter, with bare trees. In Dorrigo the magnolias and Japanese cherries we flowering so it felt like early spring, in Armidale however it felt like we had suddenly arrived in another country and deep winter, but luckily we found the way to switch on the heating function on the camper's air conditioning!

Ebor Falls, one of the several dramatic waterfalls on the way today: