The Apsley Falls in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park are very accessible, even in a truck.
The gorge rim walking track must have been designed with a dramatic intent. If one starts at the Lions Lookout, it provides marvelous views of this extraordinary gorge, with each turn revealing a more exciting vista than the last until one finally is confronted by the falls themselves.
It is easy to miss the gorge altogether as it is very narrow and is cut into gently rolling countryside so that it appears as a minor rocky defect in a beautiful green and wooded landscape.
The gorge is extraordinarily steep sided with almost sheer, stratified walls of grey rock.The river of white water runs far below.
The falls are magnificent when the river is in flood. Photographs of its normal flow show an unimpressive trickle over the falls rim but, as we saw it, it was a mighty cascade, booming and filling the air with mist.
These photos give some limited impression of the falls.
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Walking upstream one comes to a small footbridge over the river which is normally about a metre (three feet) above the river level. On this day, the water was less than half a metre (twenty inches) below the bridge deck and carried the unmistakable signs of the recent flood. On the banks, the debris can be seen about two metres (six feet) above the level of the bridge.
This photo was taken standing on the rocky bank of the river and shows debris caught on a tree trunk above the level of my head.
One can only imaging what the falls would have looked like at the height of the flood.
While we were on the bridge looking at the flood, the debris and the trees growing in what is now the river, Jean spied a Brushtail Possum asleep high in a Willow tree. I assumed it was trapped above the flooded river waiting for the water to subside but Jean thought that it could easily make its way from tree to tree and escape.
As we drove back to Walcha, we saw a Snake-necked Turtle walking across the road, and then another a few kilometres further on.