Lake Copeton

The approach to Lake Copeton is rather deceptive: you drive out of the bustling city of Inverell, along the Gwydir Highway and turn off down a seemingly never-ending stretch of tree-lined road with not one single sighting of water the entire way. True, you pass over a few dry causeways, but really it feels like you're in for a huge disappointment - surely this is going to be more of a pond than a lake, a small concrete reservoir at best.

Round a corner the trees suddenly vanish and you're weaving through a towering cut-rock chicane - out the other side and you're already rocketing over the very top of the dam wall itself, 1 million megalitres of water to your left, a 110 metre drop to your right. It's breathtaking, almost vertiginous, and so large it takes several minutes to drive across.

Soon you enter the Copeton Waters state park, a vast amount of bushland surrounding the south-west corner of the lake, with land poking out into the lake giving you water on nearly all sides. If, like us, you were after an unpowered site, you find yourself driving all the way through the parks forest, out onto tracks weaving over open rolling fields of short soft grass covered only by scatterings of large granite boulders and the occasional bush. This area is dotted with tall dead trees, still standing firmly but drowned when the level of the lake rose to cover their roots.

The lake itself has risen since being dammed in 1976, and as a result you'll be treated to the bizarre and eerie sight of trees seemingly growing out of the water - tall at the lakes edge, marching downwards out to the depths of the lake until they are no more than thin bare limbs rising above the surface like gigantic grey coral. On an overcast day by the early dawn light when the water is still and silver, the grey limbs are an eerie sight, disturbed only by passing birds and the occasional fisherman quietly moving his boat through the branches.

At this time of day - indeed any time of day - you will likely find yourself completely alone, not any sign of humanity at all, not even a fence. Kangaroos and cattle mill around the slops, chewing the short grass which is incredibly soft underfoot. Cool but dry and firm, beautiful between your toes.

You can wander around the random piles of yellow boulders that litter the landscape, fish from the granite outcrops that slope down to the waters edge, step straight from the dry grass into the shallow waters edge and swim naked without fear of being embarrassed by passing campers.