It was a little soggy at times but a few days in the bush is a perfect post-Christmas family break

There we were, sitting around a hot crackling fire, surrounded by beautiful rainforest, cold drinks in our hands, tents nearby.  As often happens in Barrington Tops National Park, a light drizzle was falling but it made no difference to us as we enjoyed this special family time together doing our favourite thing.  As a break over the Christmas holiday season it doesn’t get any better than this.

Making Christmas cookies brings out the kid in everyone

The Christmas and New Year period is a time for reunion, celebration and family.  Like most families, these themes play very strongly for us each year as everyone gets together to celebrate the old year and launch a new one.  Christmas traditionally has many parts, including decorating the tree, having family over to make the Christmas cookies, opening a mountain of presents on Christmas morning and having the big family celebration Christmas evening.  This year the big family event was at our place and we hosted over 30 people from multiple generations.  Great fun all around.

The tracks through these remote rain forests were cloaked in fog and drizzle which added to the overall experience

With new presents from Santa and full stomachs from our predictable over-indulgence we packed the trucks and headed north to remote Barrington Tops National Park, one of a series of parks that make up the World Heritage listing as the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia.  This rugged landscape rises up from the coast to levels over 1,500 metres and frequently features snow in the winter.  It also catches a lot of rain, regardless of the time of year or more predictable weather down on the coast.  And didn’t we learn this lesson!

And to make this trip really special we celebrated Julie’s birthday in style – surrounded by family under a tarp strung up to protect us from the drizzle.

The birthday girl enjoying a birthday breakfast with her youngest son

And due to the bad weather we drove into nearby Gloucester for a celebration birthday pub lunch

Some of the driving through the mud and drizzle was quite fun

We spent a couple of days exploring the beautiful high country of Barrington Tops and camped at over 1,500 metres which is quite rare in Australia.  The 4WD tracks were a bit slick and slippery but the scenery was stunning and our three car convoy enjoyed exploring these remote areas which we had almost to ourselves.

Some of the scenes were superb. This is the Barrington River high in the mountains near its source

The Christmas group photo – a bit different than normal

The biggest surprise of the trip – and the real highlight for everyone – was the Brumbies we saw near our campsite.  Brumbies, or wild horses, are more common in the Snowy Mountains but we were surrounded by them for three days.

A special treat, Brumbies grazing for breakfast within a stone’s throw of our camp

This beautiful stallion was not happy with us intruding on his paradise

This is why we do it