Views are top of the range

Jurassic parks ... Ebor Falls.Credit: Lee Atkinson

Majestic waterfalls, gorges and rainforest greets Lee Atkinson on a four-day, four-park journey near Armidale.

SOMETIMES simple things really are the best. I love a five-star spa as much as anyone but even the best of them can't compare with sitting beneath a waterfall while the rain pours around you and the current gently massages your neck and shoulders. Who needs to fork out $100 for a Vichy shower and rain-mist treatment when you can have the real thing, complete with the genuine sounds of the rainforest rather than that irritating fake taped stuff, for nothing.

Our little free-spa-in-the-rainforest moment at Chaelundi Creek in Guy Fawkes River National Park was just one of several highlights on a four-park exploration of the New England tablelands, one of the few places in NSW where you can find such varied scenery and landscapes within such a small area.

In just four days we climbed mountains topped with fantastic rock formations, walked though rainforests, gazed at views that stretched forever, photographed thundering waterfalls and sat and soaked in placid river pools in very different national parks, all without having to drive for much more than an hour at a stretch.

Day one we spent walking in Cathedral Rock National Park, not to Cathedral Rock, where granite boulders balance precariously atop a large granite tor, but to Woolpack Rocks, where similar granite boulders are piled just as precariously on each other at the summit of a small rocky mountain. (OK, it might not actually be a mountain but it's still high enough to feel like one when climbing it.) It's a beautiful half-day walk, across swampy creeks and through fern-filled rainforest and flowering banksia woodland carpeted in ground orchids and blue-bush iris. We fell asleep that night to the sound of hooting owls and distant dingoes howling, leaving us in no uncertainty as to why the waterway beside the camp was called Native Dog Creek.

Day two we headed across the road to Ebor Falls, in neighbouring Guy Fawkes River National Park. Just one of many waterfalls along the aptly named Waterfall Way that winds across the New England Plateau from Armidale to Dorrigo, recent rains had turned the three-tiered falls into an impressive wall of water, half obscured by billowing spray. There's a lookout just beside the car park but the best views are to be had at the end of a 600-metre walk along the lip of the escarpment.

Our ultimate destination, however, was in the north of the park, at the other end of the massive zigzag gorge of the Guy Fawkes River. It's here, at our camp beside Chaelundi Creek, that we find our magic free spa, a very welcome way to finish a day spent walking to a gravity-defying sliver of speckled rock called Lucifer's Thumb which juts out over the river on the gorge floor some 700 metres below.

Dramatic gorges such as these are almost commonplace in New England, where the escarpment of the Great Dividing Range rolls out towards the western plains. Much of the area is impenetrable wilderness and quite a lot of it is World Heritage-listed, including our next two parks, New England and Oxley Wild Rivers.

New England National Park has some of the most beautiful cool-temperate rainforest in the state, otherwordly and just like you imagine Jurassic Park to be - 80 million years ago it was part of the supercontinent of Gondwana.

Wraith-like tendrils of mist cling to lichen-covered trees dripping with hanging mosses and orchids and the weird mimicking calls of lyrebirds echo through the forest. Dozens of rainforest walking trails criss-cross the park but we opt for one of the short walks that circle Point Lookout.

It's cold here, even in the middle of summer - little wonder given it is 1563 metres above sea level. I'm told the view, which stretches to the coast, is little short of amazing but every time I've been here the view has been shrouded in fog.

We have better luck on the way back to Armidale, when we stop at Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. Another World Heritage wilderness area, more than 500 kilometres of rivers run through the park, many of which fall from the escarpment in spectacular waterfalls, including Wollomombi Falls, where we unwrap a picnic lunch. Wollomombi is often quoted as Australia's tallest waterfall, yet this is so only if measured from its highest point, where the land has a much gentler gradient and the water does not truly "fall". It all seems pretty academic when the falls are in full flood.

Wollomombi Falls are just 38 kilometres east of Armidale; Dangars Gorge and Falls are 22 kilometres south-east of Armidale along the Dangarsleigh Road. You really don't have to go far to go wild in New England.

Trip notes

Getting there

The four national parks are all very close to Ebor, 78 kilometres east of Armidale.

Staying there

We camped at creekside Chaelundi camping area in Guy Fawkes River National Park and at Native Dog Creek camping area in Cathedral Rock National Park, both of which are suitable for caravans and camper trailers. If camping's not your thing there is a hotel-motel at Ebor (eborfallshotelmotel.com.au) or you could base yourself in Armidale (armidaletourism.com.au).

More information environment.nsw.gov.au/NationalParks/

THREE THINGS TO DO

1 A one-hour Flight of the Six Gorges helicopter journey over Oxley Wild Rivers National Park is $400 a passenger (two or more passengers) departing Armidale Airport. [phone], fleethelicopters.com.au.

2 Tickle a trout at the LP Dutton Trout Hatchery, just outside the entrance to New England National Park on Point Lookout Road. Tours of the fish nursery cost $3.30 ($1.10 for children) and run daily, 9am-3pm. [phone].

3 Get a good look at the gorges on the Wollomombi Walk, a four-kilometre return walk that crosses the Wollomombi River and continues around the rim of the gorge to Chandler Falls in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. Allow about 90 minutes.