Celebrating waterfalls
“Of all the waterfalls we’ve ever visited, do you have a favourite?” I ask Caz.
He repeats the question back to me, then takes a sip of coffee. There is a long silence. I have asked this question before. Four years ago we had this very discussion as I prepared to write a blog exploring the timeless attraction of waterfalls.
“All the waterfalls, everywhere, all around the place?” he replies.
It seems, as the years go by, this question is getting harder to answer as the list of waterfalls we have visited grows exponentially.
“They’ve all got their own beauty. Some are beautiful with easy access, some are beautiful but hard to get to.”
He dislikes picking one of anything but, the challenge this time is just remembering all the choices. Waterfalls are such a central part of our adventuring - sometimes they are our destination, sometimes we come across them unexpectedly. We study maps to find waterfalls. Sometimes they are not the most scenic of things - drought reduces them to no more than a trickle over a darkened cliff edge. Sometimes they are roaring, flooded beasts full of power and voice. We try listing them off, waterfall by waterfall, but that isn’t helping.
“You still haven’t chosen one.”
“I know.”
Caz takes another sip of coffee and says: “Well, I would say all the ones around Selby Alley Hut are pretty good. You find one and then another one. And there is beautiful rainforest all around them. To get to the bottom of them is a bit of a scamper. But then, Belmore Falls is really nice too.”
“Upper Hastings Falls for me.”
“That was a cracker.”
“I’d say some of the canyon trips. Glennifer Falls with Dick and Corky. Doing Danae Brook with Uncle Reg. And Five Day Creek, that Jeff and I did ourselves. That was out there. Massive day. Waterfall after waterfall. We knew nothing about it or what to expect. We didn’t have enough rope for one of the waterfalls and had to rig it off so we could get out on the side. There are always those special moments. There was just two of us. You’re doing it raw and in wild areas.”
Caz’s comment about canyoning trips is testament to the immediate and intimate relationship that canyoning has with waterfalls. Canyoners move with waterfalls; they launch themselves off the top of them, shimmy down the side of them, see the waterfall from the waterfall’s own angle. They are in amongst it; feeling it, touching it, smelling it, being it. Taking the path of a water droplet. It is an exhilarating, wild bit of fun.
Canyoning first became popular in the 1960s and 70s but waterfalls are an ancient part of human outdoor experience, adventure, literature and art. Tracks and trails lead to them, lookout platforms offer views of them, monks and philosophers muse over them. Famous American naturalist John Muir (1838-1914) exclaimed: "Five hundreds miles of flooded waterfalls chanting together, what a sound was that." More recently I’ve been introduced to minimalist artist Pat Steir’s extradorinaily beautiful “waterfall” paintings from the 1980s, dripped, splashed and poured onto canvas. These works were heavily influenced by Japanese and Chinese painting; itself imbued with the symbolism of waterfalls thanks to Shinto (Japan’s native belief system) which sees running water and waterfalls as sacred objects where a person standing under a waterfall is cleansed of spiritual impurity.
Waterfalls are certainly a sensory feast - just take the simple stairway (641 steps) to the base of Ellenborough Falls in NSW. The river drops 200m, making it the tallest single drop waterfall in New South Wales and amongst the tallest in the southern hemisphere. At the base of the falls the rocks are black with slick lichen. The physical power of a river falling from 200m up, is auditory. There is a loamy, fresh smell and the feel of being drenched by spray in the damp, whipped air.
The journals of some of Australia’s early colonial explorers even come to life when confronted with waterfalls. John Oxley, in 1819, stood beside Apsley Falls in NSW positively gobsmacked:
“At this spot, the country seems cleft in twain, and divided to its very foundation: a ledge of rocks, two or three feet higher than the level on either side, divides the waters in two, which, falling over a perpendicular rock two hundred and thirty-five feet in height, forms this grand cascade. At a distance of three hundred yards, and an elevation of as many feet, we were wetted with the spray which arose like small rain from the bottom: the noise was deafening; and if the river had been full, so as to cover its entire bed, it would have been perhaps more awfully grand, but certainly not so beautiful”
There is no standard way to classify waterfalls, which is refreshing to know. Sometimes we can over-science the natural world. Water experts do grade the volume of water flowing over a waterfall or in rivers - cubic metres per second or cumecs. There is width, and there are height classifications. A more popular way to classify waterfalls is by giving them a name or descriptor - a word that illustrates how the water descends its fall. There are block waterfalls and cascades, where water descends over a series of rock steps. There are cataracts, chute waterfalls, fan waterfalls, plunge waterfalls, punchbowl waterfalls. A horsetail waterfall is one that maintains contact with the hard rock that underlies it. There is a waterfall at Waterfall Bay in Tasmania. It is an ephemeral waterfall, requiring heavy, local rainfall to flow and it crashes from the top of 100m high sea cliffs into the vivid blue of the Tasman Sea.
By world standards, however, Australia's waterfalls are relatively insignificant. Geoscience Australia tells us that Wollomombi Falls in New South Wales is ranked 135 according to the World Waterfall Database and that there remains contention over which is Australia's highest waterfall, Wollomombi Falls or Wallaman Falls in Queensland. The issue centres on debate over the inclusion of cascades in measurements. While the World Waterfall Database includes the upstream cascades leading to Wollomombi Falls, it believes that in the case of Wallaman Falls additional falls are too far downstream to be included and Wallaman Falls is thus 294 in world rankings.
I don’t even know where Williams Falls, in the Barrington Tops, is listed but it is certainly one of the ‘beautiful but hard to get to’ in our personal rankings. We camped one night at its base, tucked in an impossible spot where large boulders, leaning against each other at wild angles, form a type of cave. There was just enough flat ground for us to lay out bivy bags and sleep. From my bed I could see Williams Falls crashing into a deep green pool, surrounded by rock terraces and hanging rainforest foliage. Coloured leaves massed in the far corner of the pool, caught in an eddy. Also in my view was a small metal plague, glued to the rock near the base of the falls. It was/is a sobering reminder of the risks of canyoning - dedicated to Gary Pearson, who lost his life here in 1993.
As I lay there, I watched the ceaseless falling of water from above. How was it, that even though it hadn’t rained for months, water kept falling? The river kept coming. It filled the deep pool then flowed out and over again, forever on its way. We now know that in times of extreme drought, even some of our most reliable waterfalls stop. But at the time, I sat there in my green glowing cave of moss, a waterfall beside my head, watching infinity moving but, slowed to the rhythm of gravity.
The place was redolent with challenging symbolism. No moment of flow was/is the same as any other. Watching Williams Falls so closely was a lesson in impermanence; a masterclass in the constancy of change.
“...without
these jumbled threads of vintage rain,
the waterfall is nothing
but a thirsty cliff.”
As Caz and I sit opposite each other at the kitchen table, discussing waterfalls, he asks a more pertinent question than mine. He is always thinking about future adventures, moreso than re-living past glories. He has tired of reciting the beautiful waterfalls we have visited - Belmore Falls, Dandhara Falls, Double Falls in Sundown, all those gorgeous falls on the Jatbula, Mathinna Falls. Even the hard ones; 60r, our Hidden Falls in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, Reynolds Falls in Tasmania.
“What about the ones we haven’t visited?” he asks.
“Wow,” I reply, “that’s a whole new story.”
We both fall quiet, each of us ticking over a list of possible destinations in our head. Lower Hastings Falls. 90m or more. Still on the list after all these years. Then all those ones hidden in Washpool; Orrooroo and Willowie, Viper, Desert Creek. We’ve barely touched on waterfalls in Queensland. Vanishing Falls in the south-west wilderness, in the middle of nowhere. There’s other’s; too secret to mention but all bushwalkers know that feeling of wandering along a high ridge and stopping to listen - is that wind in the trees or the sound of a promising waterfall. You walk a little bit further, stop again, listen.
Is it getting louder? Is it, in fact, your favourite waterfall, still out there, at the head of a deep valley, somewhere (anywhere), waiting to be found.
