Basket Swamp Falls

Up early and packed up into town for supplies and now we are heading of to one of the many National Parks. The NSW Parks are more expensive to stay in than a caravan park, so free camping spots were on the menu.
We left Tenterfield and headed off towards Thunderbolt’s hideout, it seems like just a few well positioned rocks but it seems to have some sort of strange feeling when you go there. We headed off to see the tank traps set up in WW2. This was to be a frontline against the Japanese should we not be able to stop them from invading PNG.
Next stop Basket Swamp falls. It is suggested a 4WD is recommended but I would like to see anyone in 2WD try this road. Lucky it isn’t wet because the overloaded Tojo would have even been a challenge. We drove down the mountains until we came to a sign post. It looked like we could drive down further so we did. What a magnificent spot this is less than 20m from the actual waterfalls and just outside the national park (so another free camp). We are still a little nervous about just camping anywhere but we are certainly getting used to it. There was evidence of other campers so we decided we would camp here tonight.
After some time convincing Tina we decided that rather than take the track we would descend to the bottom of the falls by Andy’s track. A near shear drop of some 100m was completed with only minor scratch injuries. As the photo’s show it was well the effort and you don’t often get to sit around such a beautiful place completely alone. This would be some waterfall when it rained. We decided we would follow the swamp at the bottom by jumping from rock to rock and this went fairly well with only a minor fall from us both, wet shoes and some scratches to show for our efforts.

For the walk back we decided to take the track. Mountain Goat skills here were invaluable as this one hell of a steep track and we will both be sporting sore calves in the morning. A couple of other people rocked up for a look in the afternoon and all had trouble getting their 4WD’s back up the hill. Can’t wait to drive the Tojo up there. A very still night enjoying BBQ sausages on the fire listing to Triple”J” which we have had for last 3 days, surprisingly strange when we are still really out in the middle of nowhere. Just a note if you are going to park within 20m of a waterfall you are going to need to Whizz more!!

Andy's Manzear