the course of Sydney heading north quickly refreshes our memory of the vastness of the Big Island. We traveled along the spacious and pristine Pacific Highway.
Even so, under the intense heat of the Australian Summer, the more than 500 km, all covered in the province of New South Wales, took a long time to pass.
Around Raleigh, we turned west and inland. From the Pacific Highway, we turned to a smaller road. It follows the bed of the Bellinger River, in turn, supplied by successive tributaries.
The Waterfall Way flows through lands that still have a strong aboriginal connection and which, accordingly, preserve long names, often starting with W and with the usual indigenous sounds “llong” “gong” “unga” “urri” and the like.
Around five in the afternoon, we approached PN Dorrigo, the region's greatest natural attraction.
With the sun soon setting, having spent most of the day in the car, we continued on to the village of the same name, which serves as an exploration base.
Dorrigo, at the gates of the verdant Dorrigo National Park
Little more than a very large village, there we found, without much difficulty, the hotel where we are going to sleep. Not to mention, his name is Dorrigo.
The Dorrigo Hotel in Dorrigo, New South Wales, Australia
It is one of the historic buildings in the town, with the interior almost entirely built in wood and in a rustic style.
Its facade, a wide-open U-shaped arcade structure, for contrast, is made of cast iron, typical of British colonial architecture from the 1920s.
Hotel Dorrigo was founded in 1925 by Michael Nicholas Feros, an enterprising Greek emigrant. Almost a century later, the building remains listed as an Australian heritage site.
It is managed by the descendants of Michael, who died in 1969, aged 74.
Truth be told, they begin to suggest to us a kind of missing generation.
Once again, we are faced with that Australian feeling of being on our own. After a hasty check in, we didn't find anyone at reception again. Not even in the restaurant. We didn't find anyone, anywhere.
In the morning, it happens again. We helped ourselves to breakfast, from a small buffet left in the dining room. When we want to leave the room key, we quickly give up. Charming in its colonial grandeur, the Dorrigo Hotel appears as deserted and unpopulated as the endless interior of Australia.
Pure and harsh, the reality is that, like so many other aussies Pragmatic and business-minded, the Feros hate reducing their profits with employee salaries. As much as they dislike sacrificing their freedom to be on duty.
With a traveling spirit, with a wandering mind, we praise the ease with which they hold us.
When we prepared it, it hadn't even occurred to us in our dreams to pass through a remote and tiny pseudo-city like that, which is home to little more than a thousand inhabitants.
And yet, the strange Dorrigo intrigues us.
The Colonial Origins of Old Dorrigo
It encourages us to walk. Unsurprisingly, surprises awaited us.
In its deepest origins, the area in which the settlement was located was a domain of the Gumbainggir aboriginal people, prevalent in the current upper half of New South Wales.
The invasion and occupation of its ancient territory intensified in the footsteps of lumberjacks and timber traders, especially the valuable Australian red cedar who, from 1860 onwards, paved the way for the colonization of these parts.
Dorrigo, Australia, Monument to the combatants of the First World War
Right in front of the Dorrigo Hotel, a white statue of a soldier stands out, facing east, on a black pedestal.
On it, golden letters praise the Australian veterans who fell in the First World War, in particular, Dorrigo's envoys, totaling 460 men and a nurse.
The memorial forms a kind of roundabout for the Waterfall Way that we would later explore. It still exists, but it has already had to be rebuilt. Its vulnerable position contributed to the fact that, in 2020, an errant driver knocked it down.
Despite the obvious protagonism of the monument, without us expecting it, it is Dorrigo's unlikely and even implausible relationship with another family conflict that ends up dazzling us.
And the Baptism that Remains Shrouded in Controversy
Let's return to the beginnings of the town and the paths of the loggers. During the British colonization of the region, it became popular that Edward Parke, a major who explored the area, decided to name it Dorrigo.
Strange as it may seem, in honor of Don Dorrigo, a Spanish general, Napoleon's ally, who Parke had faced during the Peninsular War of 1808-1814.
Contrary opinions consider this explanation hallucinatory.
They argue that, like a myriad of other Australian colonial nomenclatures, Dorrigo actually came from an adaptation of a term from the dialect gumbaingirr"dudurriga”, the name of a species of native eucalyptus that is abundant there.
Dorrigo National Park, Australia: Gondwana forest
The small rural town of Dorrigo turns out to be sedating.
Waterfall Way's Refreshing Retreat
With the heat intensifying, we moved to the heart of Dorrigo National Park, in search of the coolness of the Waterfall Way that runs through it.
Between waterfalls and waterfalls, we walked almost 8km.
As Dangar Falls, PN Dorrigo
After just 2km, we were delighted with the view of the 30 meters of vertical flow and the green lagoon of Dangar Falls, part of the route of the Bielsdown River which, to the south, runs at the edge of Dorrigo.
Ahead, we come across the Crystal Shower falls, accessible via a suspension bridge and a trail that allows us to splash around in the back of its natural shower.
The Crystal Shower waterfall
The trails we follow, in turn, cross the vastness of Australia's Gondwana rainforest.
It is so called because, despite the incursions of loggers from the end of the 19th century, it has survived since the EARTH in which the current continents, mostly located in the Southern Hemisphere and also the Indian subcontinent, remained united around the current Antarctica.
Bromeliads near Crystal Shower
Once the walk was complete, we drove to the PN Dorrigo Skywalk.
We come across a walkway pointing to the sky.
It extends for 70 meters, over the vegetation.
It ends on a viewing platform of the immediate Bellinger valley and the forest as far as the eye can see.
Visitors to the Dorrigo PN Skywalk, Australia
That prehistoric immensity takes us back to Australia, to much that we had planned and still had left to cover.
In this inevitable geographical anxiety, true to what we had outlined, we returned to the car and the Waterfall Way, pointing east, towards the Pacific Ocean.
Bellingen, Dorrigo's Eastern Neighbor
And, well before the sea, Bellingen, the other town, even more famous, much more inhabited than Dorrigo, on the way of this route.
For decades, Bellingen welcomed thousands of Australians from the cities aussies from the East, committed to a life of retreat, without sacrificing the eclecticism and sophistication to which they had become accustomed.
Waterfall, Waterfall Way, between Dorrigo and Bellingen
Like Dorrigo, founded as a result of the sale of red cedar, the town saw its name, supposedly the river's namesake, being distorted, forever, by a map designer.
By the turn of the 20th century, red cedars were exhausted.
Areas cleared of trees allowed settlers to generate farmland and, importantly, pastures that contributed to New South Wales' increasingly prolific livestock and dairy production.
The grasslands that replaced the Gondwana forest
The surrounding land became bucolic patches of distinct shades of grassy green, punctuated by pockets of forest.
From Pastures and Dairies, to Povoação da Moda Tree-Changer
Dairy exports from Australia and the Bellingen area went from strength to strength when Great Britain joined the EEC and found itself almost forced to import the same products from neighboring countries.
Bellingen entered a second evolutionary hiatus. In more recent times, a continuous flow of tree-changers.
The term defines Australians who get tired of living on the expensive coast of the Big Island and move inland with their weapons and luggage. In and around sunny Bellingen, they purchased thousands of hectares of arable land from resident farmers.
In the tourist heart of the town, hundreds of stores have opened to lend concepts and urban creativity, in a way, hipster of the coastal towns from which they come.
That's where we had lunch.
Bellingen colonial houses
We wander through the alleys of the historic center, keeping an eye on the architectural charm of the houses crowned by elegant fronts, above balconies based on ground-floor arcades.
We come back to something like “Bellingen Gelato Bar".
This time, we beat the summer heat with a very rewarding ice cream.
Customers at the Gelato Ice Cream Shop
From the table outside, we see a young couple examining an assortment of advertisements posted on a board, looking for any opportunity offered by the more than 30 thousand residents.
In recent times, Dorrigo has established itself as an alternative with potential, but, in tourist terms, light years behind Bellingern, even though it is only half an hour away from Waterfall Way.
With so much of New South Wales yet to be discovered, we call the excursion over.
We pointed to the coastline that, as Australians, we would never leave, of Horseshoe Bay.
HOW TO GO
Book your Australia travel program with the operator TRAVEL QUADRANT: Tel. 256 33 11 10
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