FF Tour - Days 16&17 Urunga

The view from our campsite at
Urunga Waters Tourist Park

In keeping with the emphasis of this tour - staying where we haven't stayed before - we shifted camp, further south to Urunga and the slightly dated but never the less delightful Urunga Waters Tourist Park. Located on the banks of Kalang River, what it lacks in the aging but scrupulously clean amenities, it more than makes for in site size and location. Our site literally backed onto the river.

Urunga was only a short drive over the Kalang and then along the Bellinger River to the town itself, located opposite the junction of the two. We met up with an old school friend of Sue's, Jenny Sewell, for lunch in a local cafe and then drinks at the near hundred year old Ocean View Hotel. The company would have been more than enough but as the girls chatted away a Sunday afternoon, my contribution was punctuated by a rocking guitarist/singer (and his tambourine playing backing vocalist) whose set list was stolen from the random play of my music collection: especially that part of the collection that ranges from electric blues to classic rock. Look through the photos below for a video sample of their work. There are lots of experiences I love to repeat, with a Sunday afternoon, a Guinness or two in coastal beer garden and some quality guitar licks, being high on the list.

The junction of the rivers at Urunga

The second day we were out and about finding out more about Urunga. In the morning, we took a walking tour with a retired gent who led us about the town and talked us through its history. There aren't a lot of the old buildings left, apart from the pub and the old town hall. It was a slightly strange tour, as we were given a folder of printed A4 pictures of old buildings and taken to where they used to stand, long since replaced by another building during the last 100 years ... sometimes, several times over. Who could have known that the post office had been located in four different places over the years? The old town hall is now hidden from the street by other buildings and additions but having grown up in Urunga, his stories of dances and other functions held in the hall were warmly told. We finished down at the shoreline, where the Bellinger and Kalang join before the short trip to the sea entrance. 

Urunga had originally been a sea port for the transport of the tall timber taken from the forests on the mountain ranges to the west, with the big red cedar trees floated down the Bellinger and then loaded onto ships. Its ongoing problem was a river mouth that was often either closed completely or two shallow for the bigger ships to enter. The logs and later local produce would bank up until storms delivered flood waters to flush the sand bank out to sea. Those days quickly dwindled with the advent of the railway ... which in turn was superseded by the big trucks of road trabsport. 

After lunch, we drove to the Urunga Wetlands, an amazing example of rehabilitation. What had been a natural wetland, was destroyed by the tailings from an antimony processing plant which was established there in the 1970's. Toxic heavy metals was destroying a significant paperbark forest and and its associated waterways, making it unhabitable for the creatures that once dominated the area, let alone humans. To make matters worse, it was right on the doorstep of  a residential area (across the road on Hillside Drive) and sandwiched between the big loop the Kalang River takes around Newry Island and the Urunga Lagoon. Long term, the potential for even more harm to significant waterways was an even greater threat. Naturally, under the environmental laws of the time, one of Australia's biggest mining companies just shut the doors and walked out, without any legal responsibility to clean up their mess. The land was sold into private ownership with a view to developing it but the cost was too prohibitive.

The project to rehabilitate the wetland came with the then NSW government purchasing the land, as once it became Crown Land, it came under the management of the Environment Protection Agency and they engaged the Soil Conservation Service to undertake the work. Starting work in 2015 and involving 250 businesses, suppliers, contactors and organisations, the scope of the work was massive. Earth works established a containment cell for the contaminated materials that could not be removed, timber and metal materials were recycled, monitoring stations established and more than 36,000 tonnes of contaminated materials were removed. The site now has a relatively short, 450 metre, looped walking track which takes visitors through the reclaimed area and includes a boardwalk whose decking is the equivalent of 2.5 million - yes million - recycled plastic bags diverted from landfill. It cost a lot but it achieves even more and in 2017 won the NSW CCF Earth Award. Beyond all that, it is a lovely place to walk and see the paperbarks, now living with their feet soaked in clean water and an ecosystem which can again provide a home for birdlife and filter and clean the water which seeps into the two major waterways. We had a very pleasant walk around this outstanding example of what can be achieved with enough will and enough money but were left wondering how a multi billion dollar Australian international company could avoid a responsibility for the $10 million price tag. 

Click her to see today's photos

The afternoon and evening were spent in conversations with neighbours, beside the Kalang at our campsite, as they dipped their lines and the clean, still air of the evening was heralded by a delightful sunset.