Qualla: Apsley Falls

Apsley Falls: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0. For most of its length the Apsley River wanders gently across the high, cold tableland near Walcha, giving no hint of what it is about to do. Then the ground simply ends. The river hurls itself off the lip of the plateau and falls some sixty-five metres into a chasm so deep and sudden that the first European to see it could only write that he was "lost in astonishment." This is the first of two great drops, the opening act in a string of waterfalls and gorges that ranks among the most spectacular country in eastern Australia. The plateau gives no warning; the gorge gives no mercy. Stand at the edge and the scale rearranges your sense of the land.

Read more: Apsley Falls on Qualla

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Apsley Falls: The Serpent's Gorge

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Long before any map named this place, the Aboriginal peoples of the region understood the gorge as something made, not merely found. In their telling, the Rainbow Serpent carved this chasm in the Dreaming, then travelled on underground, slipping beneath the country to surface aga...

Read more: Apsley Falls on Qualla

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Apsley Falls: An Explorer Lost for Words

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve Bittinger from Canberra, Australia, CC BY 2.0. On 13 September 1818, the explorer John Oxley came upon the falls during his long trek across the tablelands and was stopped in his tracks. He called them "one of the most magnificent waterfalls we have seen," named them the Bathurst Falls, and gave the river its present name, Ap...

Read more: Apsley Falls on Qualla

Image: Steve Bittinger from Canberra, Australia | CC BY 2.0

Apsley Falls: A Stairway Carved by Hand

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Reaching the foot of such a gorge was once a feat in itself. In 1902 three men, Ted Baker, Jim McMillan and "Wattie" Joiner, built a wooden stairway that zigzagged from the clifftop all the way down to the water's edge, every timber of it dressed by hand with axe and adze. That o...

Read more: Apsley Falls on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Apsley Falls: The Living Gorge

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Tolagson, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today the falls anchor the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, and the gorge teems with life that suits its scale. Wedge-tailed eagles, Australia's largest birds of prey, ride the thermals that rise off the warming cliffs, wheeling at eye level above the chasm. Kangaroos and wallabi...

Read more: Apsley Falls on Qualla

Image: Brian Tolagson | CC BY-SA 4.0