Best question and worst road!

Bird of the Day:  Brush Turkey at Corindi is the only contender.

Plant of the Day:  Mangroves along board walk at Corindi.  Tree ferns at the top of the escarpment after Dorrigo were contenders

Art of the day;  Helfgott memorial in Bellingen.

Typically Australian thing of the day:  churches locked up other than at service times.  Anglicans particularly bad at this!

Maximum Temperature  20 on coast – in ranges down to 13  Minimum temperature 10

Distance travelled  with camper  300  without camper 0

Pole carrier episode Winding roads.  No water in wetlands.  Zombies in N Bellingen

So the final dawn at Corindi image was taken ....

... and the final walk through the Swamp was taken.  The camper was taken down and packed.  Frances seemed to experience a few issues getting the cover back on the pole carrier.

As we got about 1km down the road I asked "Did you get that cover back on?".  Unfortunately the answer was "No."   Even more unfortunately it was followed by "And its fallen off."  So I walked back to the camp, failing to find it.  After going to our site with no luck I was checking for places it may have rolled to and as I got back to the entrance to the park spotted it on a Koppers Log where soeone had placed it.

Frances rated my question as best of the trip since the poles were just starting to move out and we may not have noticed them dropping!  Whatever, a disaster was dodged.

On down the road through the naff roadworks North of Coffs and on down to the turn off to Bellingen.  A birding guide to the Bellingen-Dorrigo area said to take the North Bank Rd and check the wetlands.  As I have commented previously the rea has been dry recently and so were the wetlands.  This was a bit of a bugger because the road was pretty marginal for towing the camper up.  I pulled over to let some young-people-in-a-hurry past and was amused to find them stopped about 10 bends further on while a passenger examined their last 3 or 4 meals, parked on the verge (the meals as well as the car).

We found our way to Belligen but had a bit of difficulty finding the island of rainforest we were looking for.  I asked one, somewhat feral-looking, passer by and he waved his arms about a bit and said he didn't know.  Next dude in line had a dog with him but he just hauld on the dog's lead and giggled at us.  Have we walked into the set for  a Zombie movie or are these genuine disciples of Baron Samedi?  The local roosters definitely looked nervous!

Of course when Zombie #1 claimed no knowledge he was within about 20 metres of the start of the path and we found it as soon as we shut mouth and opened eyes.  It was dog unfriendly so I ducked in for a quick hoping Frances would not meet either the local mambo or (following our experience with Hosanna) the families from the nearby Christian Centre.

The rainforest was rather good but I couldn't quickly see any birds so returned.

Frances had had no interactions with locals (neither alive, dead or in-between) so we crossed into the more civilised part of town spotting a Memorial Hall PDQ and opposite it, a Memorial to David Helfgott (a sometime local inhabitant).

they also had a restrained War Memorial in the park.

We then headed off up Waterfall Way.  This was better than North Bank Rd although still narrow and twisty.  I was driving carefully so as not to invoke Chunderpooch (in which I was successful) and enjoying the views.  The road eventually narrowed to one lane over a bridge across a waterfall.  we had to give way and there seemed to be a stream of folk coming down.  Eventually it seemed clear so I headed off finding a caravan appearing just as I got to the narrowest bit.  That is why accelerators and horns were invented,

After that there were no more vehicles.  Que?  Of course: some road works were evident a bit further on and the lights were causing pulses of traffic.

Eventually we emerged in the main street of Dorrigo  where they had a nice memorial in the main intersection.

The pub was one of the better examples of a verandah'd hostelry we came across.

Note also the red open top car coming past.  We had crossed with several of these on the way up and another several weer parked in front of a latte purveying establishment.  Presumably it was a Morgan Owners Club outing.

The scenery contnued excellent plut with views across to mountan ranges.

At Ebor we swung in to look at the Falls, ignoring canophobic signs as Tammy wasn't getting out of the car.  The top falls were rather excellent, ....

.. as was the view down the valley,

On to Armidale.  This was the Town Hall.

They had - as is commonly the case - all the churches in a heap.  This is the Anglican Cathedral into which we couldn't get (even though it was a Sunday)!

The nearby Park was very well endowed with memorials including this one to HMAS Armidale.

Moving on down the road this was spotted in Uralla and thought to be an unusual war Memorial.  Not so: this is the bushranger Thunderbolt, who seems to be a focus of their tourism industry.

A much smaller town somewhat further South was Bendemeer.  They had a rather ornate set of memorial gates ...

.. with small standing stones behind remembering various individuals.

That was pretty much the deal other than the final drive to Tamworth.  The required campground was found and a site selected.  Let us see what the morrow brings - we could tell that having gone back up the hill the night was going to bring colder weather!
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