How high the Northern Tablelands stands, place by place

Every height, north to south

The Northern Tablelands Local Land Services region page gives the country's span: it ranges from 257 m at Yetman to 1,536 m at Round Mountain near Ebor, across a 40,000 km² region covering the Tenterfield, Glen Innes Severn, Inverell, Armidale, Uralla and Walcha local government areas; the same page calls it the largest highland area in Australia, with extensive areas above 1,000 metres. The service's own profile for the region calls it a distinctive highland area of undulating hills, valleys, plateaus and mountains straddling the Great Dividing Range, and puts its average elevation above 1,000 metres. The bioregion's own chapter describes a stepped plateau of hills and plains at elevations between 600 and 1,500 m, sitting on Permian sedimentary rocks, with intrusive granites and extensive Tertiary basalts; in NSW its boundary runs from north of Tenterfield to south of Walcha.

The highest ground is where the pages start to differ. Round Mountain near Ebor stands at 1,536 m on the Local Land Services page, while the Armidale Regional Council's visitor page for Guyra calls the same mountain the highest point of the New England Tablelands, but only by a whisker, at 1,584 m. The table below gives the register's own figure for it, 1,581 m.

The towns on the top

The bioregion's boundary takes in Armidale and Guyra but leaves Inverell just outside; it extends from north of Tenterfield down to south of Walcha, the state environment department's bioregion page says. The town heights come from the councils. Glen Innes Severn places its local government area near the crest of the Great Dividing Range at 1,062 m; Walcha Council gives its township 1,067 metres above sea level; and the Armidale Regional Council's visitor page puts Guyra 1,330 m above sea level, on the tablelands of the Great Dividing Range.

What the plateau is made of is in the bioregion's own account: hills and plains made on Permian sedimentary rocks, with granite intrusions and wide spreads of Tertiary basalt. Much of the bedrock is now covered by basalt flows rarely more than 100 m thick, lying over gravels and sands left by rivers, or on lake sediments; as the basalt wears away, the exposed sands have yielded sapphires, diamonds, gold and tin. The granite country is steep, with boulder outcrops and rounded tors, while the basalt country is flatter except around the old eruption centres that stand as the high peaks, each flow showing as a distinct level across the plains, and large swamps and lagoons, Llangothlin among them, were shaped in part by these changes in the land. In Glen Innes Severn the granite has another life: the Australian Standing Stones, a national monument of 40 granite monoliths to the area's Celtic pioneers, on the council's page for the area.

Off the top, to the west

West of the crest the land drops away. The lowest figure on the region page is Yetman's 257 m, and the bioregion takes in parts of six catchments: the MacIntyre, Clarence, Gwydir, Macleay, Namoi and Manning. Walcha Council's account of its district places it in the catchments of four major rivers, the Namoi flowing west and the Macleay, Hastings and Manning flowing east. Inverell sits just outside the bioregion.

Down to the coast

The coast is a drive below the plateau rather than a line on it. NSW National Parks describes the 185 km Waterfall Way scenic drive between Coffs Harbour and Armidale: it traverses five national parks, winds through the rainforest of Dorrigo National Park up to 750 m at Dorrigo Mountain, and could be covered in about 2.5 hours, though with its stops it could take all day. The plateau it climbs to stands over 1,000 metres on average, on the state's regional profile. The parks service's caution for the drive is that mobile reception may be absent in different areas along it.

Which stations the register records

Two of the places whose heights the region's pages give are stations rather than towns. The district's highest point is a trig station: Walcha Council gives 1,463 m at the Grundy Trig Station, which stands near the Grundy Fire Tower, 38 km south of the town in the Riamukka area. The highest railway station in NSW stood on the same plateau, the State Heritage Inventory records, at 1,363 m: Ben Lomond's station, one of the smallest brick passenger stations built during the 1880s railway expansion, and for years the town's post office and a place where locals did their banking. It opened on 19 August 1884. Its goods shed was sold and removed in 1983; in 1984, a hundred years after its official opening, the station closed; and rail operations along the Great Northern line ceased in 1988. North of Armidale the line has closed, and the North Coast line, completed in 1932, is now the main Sydney–Brisbane route, the heritage entries record.