Machinery Creek Falls 4. Aug 2018
Machinery Creek has at least five waterfalls (one of which is Phillips Falls). Staring at the other four on the map, and being lured by their very existence into visiting each one, I called them, like a parent bereft of brain, Machinery Ck Falls 1, 2, 3 and 4. At least everyone kind of knows what you’re talking about – provided they start counting at the same end as you did. I thought the lowest ones, and the only ones people seem to post photos of, should be number 1. The water was maybe going to come over my gumboots if I went to falls 1, so I decided to work backwards for now, and begin at number four. Tessie and I ate lunch, and off we set. She does love this bagging business.
My noble waterfall bagging companion; adventuring together.
The forest is really very pleasant in this area, especially now, in the cool and lack of glare of winter, and we enjoyed the roughly contoured section of most of the walk, only dropping to the falls after the last minute. I did actually go to where the track we were walking on crossed the creek, to see if we could see the falls from there, and, when we couldn’t, backtracked a bit. It was all a fun exploration. There’s still plenty left, that’s for sure.
Looking back upstream from the head of the falls.
Standing at the top of these falls is like standing at Herods Gates. There is a hint of a whole world of wonder, just out of reach, yet adumbrated by the shadows and sounds. You sense rather than see the mighty gorges just out of reach ahead of you. I need to go back, preferably with company, to see more of this stunning area. For now, we explored Falls 4, and then followed along above th stream for a while, just to see what we could see, before taking a good spur back up to the road we’d originally walked along. As wth Tin Spur Falls, there were lots of shades of orange in the rocks, and tannin in the water, so that the colours were wonderful, especially when contrasted with the green ferns.
