Protestors Falls, Nightcap National Park

Protestors Falls, in Nightcap National Park, is the main natural attraction close to The Channon and worth the detour for anyone visiting the area. A short walking track (about 2.6 km return, mostly flat) leads through subtropical rainforest to a 30-metre waterfall that drops into a cool, clear pool. The forest here is genuinely ancient — part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area — with enormous strangler figs, Antarctic beech on the ridge above, and a bird life that rewards patient watching.

The falls are accessible year-round but best after rain, when the volume of water is at its most dramatic. The walk itself is easy and suitable for children. The trailhead is at the end of Tuntable Falls Road, about 10 km from The Channon; you will need a car to get there. The surrounding national park has several other walks, including routes to the longer Tuntable Falls (the highest accessible waterfall in NSW) further into the park.

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The falls are named after the 1979 protest that stopped a logging road from being pushed through the Nightcap Range — one of the first successful direct-action conservation campaigns in Australian history. The protesters (many of them from the communes around The Channon and Nimbin) chained themselves to machinery and blockaded the road for weeks. Nightcap National Park was gazetted in 1983, and the falls and the forest that surrounds them exist in their current state partly because of that campaign.

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