Bellbrook

In the ‘cradle of Australian country music’, where the Macleay River and sparkling creeks collide, bellbirds still tinkle in forested mountains and time has gone fishing. Heritage-listed Bellbrook’s turn-of-the-20th-century architecture reflects an era when bullock teams laboured down Main Street and cedar getters felled huge trees with two pit saws riveted together. 

For countless generations this magical valley sung with more than just the call of  ‘timber’, it echoed with Thunghutti didgeridoos and tap sticks, and later the guitar strumming of country music legends Slim Dusty and his mate Shorty Ranger. Driving out to Slim’s boyhood farm along the Slim Dusty Way Scenic Drive, past jagged mountains, rolling hills and transparent Nulla Nulla Creek, it is easy to see where their inspiration came from.

Feel like a pioneer on an historic walk past Bellbrook’s perfectly-restored residential homes, hotel, café, general store and a Community Craft Centre. Accommodation ranges from riverside cabins to farmhouses, campgrounds and mountain health retreats.

At riverside Blackbird Flat Public Recreation Reserve’s free, car-based and dog-friendly campgrounds, west of Bellbrook, happy campers fish, canoe, mountain bike and cook perch or bass on the barbeque.