Waterfall Way inspires thoughts of sparkling waterfalls, green rainforests, fairies and water nymphs. Well, it does for me anyway. After the drama of festival volunteering we ventured along this scenic route for a little road trip. Here’s how it went.
Directionless
Coming into our Australia vanlife trip we decided to not make plans. We wanted this trip to be free flowing so we were able to say ‘yes’ to those spontaneous moments without being tied to a route or a time. So far I’d say it’s worked alright, but this mini trip is an example of where that can waste some time.
We were heading North, from Mollymook, Sydney, up and up to Byron for the festival. On this road trip we headed back down a few hours in order to travel along Waterfall way to the big one. Dangar Falls.
I only found this waterfall after declaring I needed rainforest, bushland, streams and waterfalls. When having a browse on the maps, Dangar falls was the one that caught my eye, then I saw there were multiple waterfalls in the same area. It was a must.
So back down south we went, from Byron to Yamba. We’d been to Yamba on the way up so it was a familiar stop. We watched some hermit crabs, grabbed a coffee and we even did a short yoga sequence together.
When in Urunga
We left Yamba for Urunga. We picked Urunga because we wanted to avoid Coffs Harbour, having stayed there on the way up, we weren’t that keen. The waterfall way begins at Coffs Harbour and we turned off it, very slightly, to go to Urunga. You probably won’t find Urunga on anybodies ‘must-see’ list but we enjoyed our little stay there.
We parked up where the Kalang River meets the Bellingen River and where they both meet the sea. In the morning, I stretched my legs on the boardwalk along the river mouth. Watching the currents of everything connecting was mesmerising. At the end of the boardwalk was a sandy beach and I settled there to watch the swallows fly around.
As I often do in the mornings, I opened google maps on my phone and looked about to see anything noteworthy in Urunga. Once Ben had woken up I shared what I found and we set off to The Honey Place.
The Honey Place, Urunga
The entrance to The Honey Place was modelled as a giant beehive. We went straight to the beehive behind glass I’d seen in the reviews. You could see the honey bees buzzing around doing their business. We found the queen, felt the heat of the hive.
We went into their plant nursery. 90% of the plants were ferns and I think I only saw about 3 that were for sale. But Ben likes ferns. Next, we went inside to try their different honeys. They had flavoured honeys like chilli honey, coffee honey, mint honey. Also, monofloral honeys, where the bees collect nectar from one plant.
We tried them all and my favourite was the darker, bolder, woody Coastal tea tree honey. Ben’s favourite was the sweet wildflower honey. We bought a small tub each and then took a coffee and cake into the back room.
We’d initially avoided the back room because there was an educational video playing in there. Something we agreed on reminded us of childhood. The video was indeed a video TAPE made in the 80s. To be honest, we were so engrossed in the video and now want to do an apiary course together.
Bellingen
That video was filmed in Bellingen, so we stopped there and took the advice from The Honey Place shopkeeper and went to The Old Butter Factory for a coffee, showered at the local swimming centre, and had a browse round the shops.
This story would be incomplete if I didn’t tell you Ben stepped in dog poop in his flip flops (or thongs as the Aussies call them teehee), which flipped flopped it all up his leg. I laughed, he didn’t. We then continued up Waterfall Way and spent two nights at a free rest stop in Thora.
In the interest of not making this post too long I’ll wrap it up here! You can read about our continued roadtrip where we reach Dorrigo and Dangar Falls here! It felt like a holiday from our holiday!
