Encounters…
Plomer Road
“IT’S like this all the way”, said the man.
I look at the machine he rides. It looks odd, a hybrid of fat tyre minibike and trail bike. He was coming from the Port Macquarie end of Plomer Road, a road we were almost half-way along.
We were negotiating a stretch of flooded potholes. I was cautious. Our long wheelbase VW Caddy, a minivan, is not four-wheel drive and it looks like the road deteriorates into that sort of road — a 4WD track. Well, that is what it is listed as, anyway.
We bounce along a little way until we come to what looks like a deep, flooded span of road. A 4WD comes up behind and pulls even with us.
“Is that a 4WD?”, the driver asks.
“No”, I answer.
“You’ll get through. It’ll be a slow journey, though. It’s like this from now on,” he said, indicating the potholed and flooded road ahead.
“Some of the potholes are a metre deep. The Maria River Road is an alternative”.
Fording metre-deep, flooded potholes isn’t such a good idea. We reverse back and find sufficient width of road to turn and head back towards Crescent Head to take the Maria River Road.
This was Limeburners Creek National Park, a patch of coastal forest, rocky headlands and beaches between Crescent Head and Port Macquarie. Scouting out places where we could spend time later in the year while on a more leisurely journey is one of the purposes of this trip. Our intention is to meander slowly along the coastal backroads.
Heading towards Crescent we stop off at the headland carpark in Goolawah National Park to watch a few surfers catching the point break. The view north from here is excellent, all the way along sandy beaches to the far horizon.
Nearby is Waves, a privately-operated campground set into the surrounding bush. Not exactly your glitzy, expensive caravan park with all the mod-cons, Waves is incised into the coastal scrubland and is a low-key place. There is a good vibe to it and we decide it will be where we stay on our next road trip north.
The Plomer Road is all-weather gravel from Crescent Head to Point Plomer and is easily navigable by any non-4WD vehicle. After that, it’s 4WD only.
No flooded potholes
We head back to find the Maria River Road that connects the surfing town of Crescent Head to the ferry that will take us across the Hastings River to Port Macquarie. It is all-weather gravel, no flooded potholes, not all that bumpy. The road cuts through the country between the Pacific Highway and the Point Plomer Road some kilometres inland of it. Traversing bush and farmland, the road is for those without 4WD who want an alternative to the high-speed traffic on the highway.
This, the Maria River Road, must be the road my partner, Fiona, and I travelled decades ago. Not together, we didn’t know each other then. I thought we must have been mistaken in assuming it the Plomer Road we travelled back then, but Fiona insists it was. If, so, then it sure has deteriorated.
“The bonnet of my car flipped open while I was driving somewhere along here”, she told me. “It was broken. I had to tie it down”.
If you find the highways too long, too straight or too fast, then either route, Plomer Road or Maria River, provides an alternative after you turn off the Pacific Highway to Crescent Head, or if you come the other way from the river ferry at Port Macquarie. But… why hurry? There are beaches to hold you and campgrounds to stay in.
Places are seldom as they were when we first visit them. Much is forgotten in the intervening years. Towns get bigger, tourists more numerous, costs higher, roads surfaced or, perhaps, left to go to pieces. So it was that we were left with the question of whether it was the Plomer Road that had changed, or just our memory of it.
Campsites
Waves Campground: http://www.wavescampground.com
Point Plomer Campground: https://www.campsight.com.au/catalogue/mid-north-coast/point-plomer---limeburners-creek-np--south-of-crescent-head
Malaleuca Campground: https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/camping-and-accommodation/campgrounds/melaleuca-campground
Racecourse Campground — Goolawah National park (close to Limeburners Creek National Park): https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/camping-and-accommodation/campgrounds/racecourse-campground
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Stories of the coast…
