Keeping it Cool in Armidale

I’ll admit, I knew absolutely nothing about Armidale before going there. I knew it must have been a pretty big city as you see it come up as a location when the nightly news do the weather around the country – and in a country this size to make it as a city which has a weather forecast it must be pretty big. Beyond that, the only other thing I knew about Armidale was that it was home to the infamous Barnaby Joyce and his cowboy hat. For anyone outside of Australia who isn’t familiar with who this cowboy is you can find out the gist here.

As it turns out, Armidale is Australia’s highest city standing at 980 metres above sea level. What this actually means is that its bloody cold! Given the way we departed our last stop in Tenterfield, I didn’t put as much research into the itinerary as I ordinarily would have. However a quick Google search showed me there was surprisingly a lot to do in the area – perhaps ol’ Barnaby had gotten something right. We had a quick stop off on the way at Glen Innes, where we stumbled on the truly awesome Australian Standing Stones.

The park we stayed at – Armidale Tourist Park – was right on Waterfall Way which is about two hours of highway with gorges and waterfalls dotted along the road and easily accessible. However once again we could see the drought impact with all waterfalls except for one not flowing. Having said that, even without water flowing as sights they are still breathtakingly impressive to see. Deep gorges and rock faces which make your stomach churn to look down on. This was the case with our first stop at Wollomombi Falls in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. At one point these were once Australia’s highest falls and you can easily paint a picture in your mind of how amazing the falls would look. You try and take pictures but there’s no way to get the perspective of just how deep these gorges go – at least not with my current camera skills. The kids were both starting to kick off so we did some small 500m return walks to some of the lookouts and moved on.

We moved on to Ebor Falls in Guy Fawkes National Park – currently this is the only flowing waterfall on Waterfall Way. There’s an upper and lower falls which are completely different, and the best part was that both lookouts were literally a handful of meters from the car park so it was a super quick stop off and tick off the list.

Now on to our main challenge. I’d researched this hike to Cathedral Rock. It was about a 5km return but with the last 500 metres to the summit being quite a challenging almost vertical rock climb. Reviews online weren’t helpful – some said they had done it with young kids, others saying they had taken teenagers and they couldn’t do it. I decided to share this information with my husband as we were pulling in to the park – he started to fight it but then realized he had already lost, I’d already gotten him to the park. We decided we’d just see how we go and if we don’t get to the top then we don’t. The hike was beautiful. Isolated, lush rainforest and wild kangaroos. About a kilometer in there was a huge fallen tree which cut off the path completely. The only way to keep going was to go completely off the path. Even for me who doesn’t have the same fear of Aussie snakes and creepy crawlies as Daniel I was freaking out and ready to turn back. Wading through knee high bush and wood was prime biting territory. After about half an hour of bush bashing and thankfully without anything venomous appearing (unless you count Kaia’s whining) we made it back to the track.

We got to the halfway point of the loop where you have the option to take the 500m detour up to the summit. Looking at it the track it didn’t seem that bad so with a 1 year old being carried by Dad, and the 4 year old gimping about we made the very wise parenting choice that we’d take on a rock climb. Kaia is always jumping from one thing to another so the rocks just gave her a proper use for that skill. It was definitely steep but manageable until the last 50 – 100 meters up to the summit. The rock climb then turned vertical, having to pull yourself up onto boulders and rocks with about two to five metre gaps beneath you. Was definitely not possible with the kids so the two of us took it in turns to go up to the top. The climb down was tough and our unused thigh muscles got an absolute beating. Super proud of that hiking achievement with the kids. It’s lucky Armidale has such cooler temperatures as I’m pretty certain we wouldn’t have made it out alive otherwise.

We kept the hiking momentum going the next day with another 6km hike doing the Threlfall Track in Gara Gorge. An easy graded track – although still an ambitious distance to take on with the kids –  which took in more spectacular gorges, water holes and rivers.

Dangars Gorge was next on the list and was the most stomach churning height of them all at 183m height. The couple kilometer walks take you to a few different lookouts which really hang you over the edge which was different to some of the other “safer” lookouts we’d come across. The lookouts only had metal grid flooring meaning you could look straight down below. We got the obligatory selfie before calling time on that.

Surprisingly we absolutely loved Armidale – I had completely underestimated it thinking it was just a boring country town. There is so much to do in the area – we could have easily filled another week there had it not been for having to get down to Sydney by a certain date. As it was we were only meant to stay there for 3 nights originally but extended for double that because we loved the park and the area so much. The park we stayed at was perfectly located, and the pitch we had for our camper was directly opposite the playground which meant the kids were out of our hair a lot of the time. No matter where we go Kaia is always finding older boys to play with in the playground – definitely a sign of things to come.

Stay cool Armidale – you’re awesome! Will just bring warmer clothes next time.