Blogs from Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania

The small town of Coonabarabran was where we based ourselves to tackle the Warrumbungles, a volcanic mountain range which lies within a National Park. Plugs, dykes and domes are common volcanic features within the park. The area is also a dedicated Night Sky Park, hosting the renowned Siding Springs Observatory, and we visited an outdoor astronomy park on our first night to see the stars. Donna the Astronomer was our host, and the stargazing session was very informative. The next day we thought we would tackle an easy walk to Fanny's Lookout, but it proved anything but easy. One thousand stairs up to the lookout and our legs were burning, but the view was worth it. The next day we did the Grand High Tops walk, which climbed above the famous Bread Knife. This was a ... read more

Saturday 18th April 2015 We drove through Wellington, stopping only at the showgrounds to replenish our water supply and from the little we saw of Dubbo we had little wish to stay there. Our aimed for destination was the little town of Binnaway, Judy having seen this recommended on the Facebook , Free & low-cost Camps Australia group. What a find, clean ablutions, grassy setting by the side of an overgrown river, and power on a user-pays basis. We joined four other vans before walking around the town. It was very quiet, and except for a small group of teenagers assembled in the main street - it seemed deserted. In the past Binnaway was a thriving service town for the farming community. In the 1920s it was the railway centre for the area, connecting the ... read more

Geo: -31.2734, 149.277Left Tamworth at 9am and arrived in Coonabarabran at 11.30am. There were long streches of sweeping plains, growing wheat and canola. Then we had big streches of the Warrunbungle Ranges to cross through, the different landscapes were lovely, but I felt tired when we arrived in Coonabarabran, had spent most of the time with my foot flat to the floor, so we rested for a while after setting up in the Caravan Park. Nice shady quite park, clean and pretty laid back, suits us fine.Mick has been having trouble starting the ute and needs new glow plugs for it, so rang Dubbo, Mitsubishi, to see if they could put them in tomorrow for us. They will be $102 each and he needs a set of four, but they did not have any in stock, ... read more

Friday came and we were on the move again, continuing our journey north. We headed for Parkes which was purely a stopping off point. We arrived at about 2.45 which gave us plenty of time to find a flat pitch and walk into town. Later we walked up the hill to the monument/lookout we could see from the site. Back in the caravan and just as it got dark there was a sudden noise like something being dropped on to the roof. Graham investigated with a torch and saw the cause - a couple of possums were in the tree that we had parked under and were foraging, causing leaves and seedpods to drop. The noise went on for about an hour but had stopped by the time we went to bed. We didn’t need to ... read more

Day 72 Coonabarabran was a little jewel in this trip; it was a smashing little town that we really enjoyed. I have to say that the night star gazing, with Peter Starr was a memorable moment in my existence on the planet. The small campsite we were on “The John Oxley” was just great it all seemed to gel together. We had met 3 guys who were contractors (Riggers) working on huge mast for Vodafone, who are not really a big player over here, but they are increasing the network coverage. We had got taking to Peter, who was the site supervisor, a nice pleasant man, he was always good to talk to. His other site mates were Phil and Tim, two equally pleasant fella’s who we whiled away some time with. They were good enough ... read more