Touch heaven at the Barrington Tops
The Barrington Tops tourism website promises that a visit to this World Heritage-listed region “will bring you a little closer to heaven”. It’s a good sales pitch and I’m in the four-wheel-drive, as I figure that getting closer to heaven in the wilder parts of the tops will probably involve a rough ride.
With more time (and training), it would be great to see as much as possible on foot, though at least my destination — The Tops Organic Retreat — has some lovely walking trails within the 2000-acre property. But first, getting there is all part of the experience. It’s a pretty trip along Bucketts Way through the bucolic villages of Booral, Stroud, Wards River and Stratford (on the Avon River, of course) to the town of Gloucester, where the dramatic hills and mountains that draw nature lovers to the region begin to really make their presence felt.
Leaving Gloucester and continuing through tiny Barrington, then Copeland, once a thriving gold-rush town, along the scenic Barrington Tops Forest Road towards Scone, you climb ever higher until the pastoral surrounds give way to thickly forested mountains before you descend a little to more cattle country. Barrington has long been a cattle-grazing area; in fact, I cross half a dozen cattle grids on the final 4km between the Jems Creek Road turnoff and the welcome sign on the retreat’s open gate. I also have to stop several times and wait for cattle to move off the road (at their leisure).
The bovines are not the only animals with a relaxed attitude towards cars and roads around here. A few wallabies casually hop across my path and, as I drive into the homestead and reception area of the retreat, there are alpacas, chickens and goats also behaving like they own the place.
I’m met at the reception building, which houses the large communal dining area/lounge/restaurant, by Rachel, a tree-changer from Sydney, along with retreat owners Sharini (also head chef) and John, who offers me a glass of organic wine along with all the info I need for finding my way around the property’s many attractions.
My accommodation — kind of alpine chalet meets forest log cabin — is warm and welcoming despite the chill in the afternoon air. It has a huge spa bath, basic cooking facilities (the bigger cottages have full kitchens), log fire, television and phone, with a cosy mezzanine bedroom that holds a queen and a single, clothed in organic cotton sheets — and electric blankets. The complete lack of mobile reception (there is internet) reminds me how remote the retreat is, which come evening will also mean total quiet and brilliant stars.
After a stroll around the parts of the property close to the cabins and cottages, which are spaced a good distance from each other, I relax in the quiet of my cabin. I read a little about the national park, its flora and fauna, and “gentleman bushranger” Captain Thunderbolt, a legend of the region who is said to have disdained the use of firearms and never robbed women.
Dinner in the communal dining/lounge building, a short stroll from my cabin, is a lovely, light trout salad followed by a fragrant Sri Lankan fish curry, then rich, warm sticky date pudding with cream and ice-cream. It’s all organic and local, some of it grown in John’s vegie Garden, with organic wines from Rosnay. After such a huge meal it’s all I can do to waddle back to my cabin for a quiet — very quiet! — night in. Breakfast the next morning is equally hearty, again all organic, from the eggs to the bread and coffee.
Most of Barrington Tops is declared wilderness, virtually unaffected by human activity, its rainforests part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area — the most extensive strip of diverse rainforest on Earth. Part of a spur of the Great Dividing Range and 1500m above sea level, the park is carved out of ancient lava flows. Its huge diversity of native wildlife includes more than 40 threatened species, such as the red-legged pademelon, rufous scrub-bird, yellow-bellied glider and spotted-tail quoll. There are also brumbies, feral pigs, wild dogs and foxes roaming its Antarctic beech forests.
You don’t need a 4WD to get to the retreat, or to see a lot of the national park, but I have one because I have horses, so before I start heading home I chance it and take myself yet closer to heaven up a long, steep track only accessible by 4WD and even then only in dry weather. The trail wends its way into towering forest where koala families live alongside an amazing diversity of birdlife, including the elusive lyrebird. At this altitude, the changing views of the distant rounded hillsides mixed with the forested mountains and bottomless valleys are indeed heavenly.
- For more information on the 4.5-star Tops Organic Retreat, visit thetopsretreat.com.au. For more on Barrington Tops National Park, see nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/Barrington-Tops-National-Park.
