Ask a New South Wales local about Mt Hyland and you may get a shrug, which is partly the point. The nature reserve occupies high, cool country on the edge of the New England tableland, west of the Dorrigo plateau, in the same belt of mountains that holds the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia. Here the forest changes character as you climb: warm eucalypt forest gives way to tangled rainforest and then to stands of Antarctic beech, gnarled and moss-draped trees whose relatives grow in Patagonia and New Zealand, a leftover from the days when the southern continents were joined.
The nearest town is Dorrigo, a little over thirty kilometres away, and there is nothing resembling a service station in the reserve itself. Fill the tank in Dorrigo or on the New England side in Armidale, which is a much bigger town. Around here the distances between pumps are real, and mobile coverage drops out quickly. Carry water, a spare layer and a decent map.
Riding in this district means choosing your surface with care. The sealed Waterfall Way, which climbs from the coast through Dorrigo and Ebor, is a superb road, with sweeping gradients, bends in tall forest, waterfalls at Ebor, and the sort of morning mist that lets you feel the altitude. The tracks that climb toward the reserve itself are another matter: gravel, ruts and washouts, passable by a trail bike in dry weather and a bad idea after heavy rain. Only go if you have the right machine and the skills.
The air at this height is cold, even in summer, and winter nights drop below freezing, with the occasional light snowfall. The rain forest is wet most of the year, rich with ferns, lichens and the calls of bowerbirds and whipbirds. Spring and autumn offer the best compromise of mild days and dry tracks. Leave no litter, stay on formed tracks, and treat the beech stands carefully: some of the oldest trees are several centuries old, and they grow slowly.