The Northern Tablelands

The inland route takes me through a region known as New England, or the Northern Tablelands, a plateau of the Great Dividing Range.

The area, at first sight, seems not particularly spectacular -- mostly fields, and every now and then a nondescript town or village. Some of these hinterland towns have made attempts to create a landmark, as a tourist attraction, by building some big object out of concrete or fiberglass -- for instance, a big golden guitar or in the case of Singleton, the world's biggest sundial. These objects are usually not particularly pretty. They are mainly just big, which is what makes these efforts, although that is certainly the opposite of the intention, almost a little pathetic.

But when you keep your eyes open you will easily discover special things and great beauty everywhere. For example, just behind the car park of the scenic lookout at Moonbi, to the left of the stinking grafitti-stained toilets, there is a wonderful ficus microfolia tree that has overgrown a big rock. Nobody knows how this tree came here -- it does not seem like a native tree to this area, but maybe it is.

At that place I met a man named Noel, a passionate photographer who happens to have the exact same camera model as me, and a similar eye for beauty. We talked about these things and he showed me another, much smaller, miracle of nature: a seedling of the same tree which has sprung from, and caught hold in, a tiny crack in another big round rock, only 30 metres away. This baby tree has zero soil, but so far it lives. And if it will manage to survive another few years, its thin roots will eventually reach the ground. And then, who knows, in another few decades it might grow into a massive guy such as his parent.