A World Away

by Ian Smith
(Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia)

I was looking for waterfalls, unashamedly searching the internet for them. Thus it was that I came across Mathinna, situated in an area I'd never been before; but Tassie's like that, there's all sorts of stuff just off the main roads if you're prepared to venture.

To get there you have to find Fingal, west of St. Marys on the east coast. Once there you turn off and head roughly in a northerly direction on the B43.

En route you will come through a cutting that is truly striking. It's rock faces are coloured purple and white and yellow; amazing!
A little further on are the dirt roads that will take you to Mathinna and Evercreech.
If you have hard tires like I have on the motorhome you will certainly hear the bumps as you ride over the sharp gravel.

When you arrive there's a small area to park and there are bush toilets there also. They say the walk to the falls is 20 minutes return and that's right; except that it only takes you to the lower cascade.

This is pretty as falls go but I was keen to see the lot.

The upper falls can just be tantalizingly glimpsed through gaps in the trees.

For some reason I thought I'd seen pictures of them but, on rechecking, couldn't find them.
So it was that Michael (Rosemarie's son) and I looked at the lower falls and wondered how to get up. It was clear people had tried scrambling up the slope on the eastern side and soon we would be joining them.


The slope, though steep, was manageable and it didn't take all that long before our scrambling brought rewards and we were looking at the next falls. Not as pretty as the first but we were on our way up.

That's about where it all started going downhill figuratively and uphill in reality. There was no further track, though we thought we'd seen one. Try as we might we never came across it and, as we slowly ascended the gradient became steeper and the undergrowth thicker.

It was seriously tough going for the next hour as we tried in vain to get closer to our goal but, instead, it was slowly slipping away from us, the precipitous nature of the slope barring our progress in that direction.

I snapped off a couple of shots but disappointment reigned as we finally admitted defeat and scrambled down the hill, coming out just below the first fall.

Further enquiries since I got back home led me to find out that the third falls are accessible. Apparently there's a rough track on the left hand side of the falls that leads upwards though it's not for the faint of heart.



Go to Mathinna Falls