Nightcap National Park and Limpinwood Nature Reserve

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Nightcap National Park

   Nightcap National Park covers a high, wet plateau and escarpment north of Lismore in New South Wales, the remains of the rim of an ancient volcano centred on Wollumbin, Mount Warning, whose eroded caldera forms one of the largest in the world. The plateau receives some of the highest rainfall in the state, and it is covered in subtropical rainforest, tall eucalypt forest and dramatic waterfalls, including Minyon Falls, which drops about a hundred metres over a cliff of volcanic rock. Nightcap is one of the Gondwana Rainforests reserves, and in 2000 it made headlines when scientists found a previously unknown tree, the Nightcap oak, surviving in only a few small populations here.

   Read the complete Nightcap National Park write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Nightcap National Park is where the day begins. Next is Mount Warning National Park.

2. 2. Mount Warning National Park

   Wollumbin, as the Bundjalung people call it, rises on the Queensland border like a huge broken tooth, the central plug of the eroded Tweed volcano. Captain Cook saw it from the sea in 1770 and named it Mount Warning, as a signal of the dangerous reefs offshore. At just over eleven hundred metres it is not high, but standing alone above a vast bowl, ringed by the cliffs of the old crater rim, it looks far greater. It is often said to be the first place on the Australian mainland to catch the sun each morning, though that depends on how you measure.

   Read the complete Mount Warning National Park write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Mount Warning National Park comes up about 57 km into the recorded legs. Next is Limpinwood Nature Reserve.

3. 3. Limpinwood Nature Reserve

   Twenty-odd million years ago, a huge shield volcano stood where the Tweed valley is now, on what became the border between New South Wales and Queensland. Erosion has since carved out its centre, leaving one of the largest erosion calderas in the world, a vast bowl of green farmland ringed by cliffs and ridges, with the volcano's old central plug, Wollumbin, also known as Mount Warning, standing in the middle. Limpinwood Nature Reserve, on the northern rim of the caldera, protects a stretch of subtropical rainforest that is part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site preserving forests whose lineage goes back to the ancient supercontinent.

   Read the complete Limpinwood Nature Reserve write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 93 km into the recorded legs you reach Limpinwood Nature Reserve. Next is back through Mount Warning National Park.

4. 4. back through Mount Warning National Park

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Mount Warning National Park write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Mount Warning National Park, late in the day. Next is Nightcap National Park.

5. 5. Nightcap National Park

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Nightcap National Park write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Nightcap National Park. That is the ride.