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Published: July 16th 2008
ZZR01 ready for departure
The Zig Zag Railway, LithgowJune 18 - left our lovely Sydney caravan park and drove up to Lithgow, which is at the western end of the Blue Mountains - we chose this route as we had been to Katoomba (the most popular area of the Blue Mountains) before. The drive to Lithgow was rather a challenge - we took the road out from Windsor with the interesting name of Bells Line of Road - a great scenic drive but very hilly! There were a couple of very long steep sections where Blu had to get down to first gear and pray that Big Bird would make it all the way up!
Lithgow is a mining town, nothing special but set in the heart of great Blue Mountain scenery. We took the Zig Zag Railway steam train trip - it does exactly that - on the way down the mountain the train stops twice, shunts and turns around to zig or zag in the opposite direction. Blu must look like a real steam train enthusiast (funny that) because Roger the driver asked would we like to ride up front in the engine cab - that was fun!
Did a trip over to Jenolan Caves
the next day - we had been impressed by the caves when we visited them way back in 1975 and were keen to have another look. We weren’t disappointed - I think they are probably the best caves we have seen, and we have been to a few. We did the Lucas Cave which has a really good range of features but there are 8 other caves open to the public, and you can also walk around the huge open Nettle Cave and Devil’s Coach House. The drive down to the caves is very narrow, steep and winding and the main entrance to Jenolan is through a small gap in the Grand Arch. When we got to the ticket office we asked, do BUSES come down that road - yes, and they also go through the arch too, albeit rather slowly!
The next day we ducked in and out of the rain to visit some of the high cliff-top lookouts between Lithgow and Blackheath - made us realise the extent of the Blue Mountains, which is far more than just the famous “Three Sisters” at Katoomba. We also had a wander around the “almost” ghost town of Hartley, where
all of the buildings except one date back to the 1870s.
Set off for Orange the next day - they call themselves the Colour City - stopped into Bathurst on the way and visited Mount Panorama (it’s a racing car track for those of you who don’t follow this kind of thing). Will cover Mt Pam, as the locals call it, in a separate blog for petrol heads. I must say that I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected - it’s actually a public road so you can drive around it, albeit at a stately 60 kph.
The drive through to Orange was surprisingly hilly - lots of slow climbs. It was a bitterly cold day, about 6 degrees. Once we left the coast at Sydney we really noticed the drop in temperature inland. Yes -Australia does get cold in winter! We went to a local pub to watch the NZ v UK rugby game, which they kindly put onto one of their TVs for us (but not the sound, so we watched rugby union to the sounds of rugby league on the big TV in the next lounge, a bit confusing really)! One of the
locals explained why it’s cold there - Orange is precisely 863 metres above sea level. Actually it snowed there a couple of weeks ago (end of June).
Yes, cold nights, but mostly followed by nice sunny days and clear blue skies. Dubbo was next on our list - Blu was keen to see the Western Plains Zoo- it’s an open range zoo, with the large “enclosures” separated from human visitors by rather cleverly concealed moats (apart from the man-eating animals of course). You can walk, drive or bike around, we chose to drive as it was sunny but cold. We were pretty impressed with the zoo - viewing of the animals and overall layout was excellent, and the habitats were very natural.
Still travelling through the area known as the Western Plains, we moved on to Coonabarabran - love the name and the place. The inland towns are so different to the coast and we really enjoyed our journey through the central west, which was not touristy at all and an easy drive on the whole. Funny though, lots of caravans pass through en route to Queensland to escape the southern winter - mainly from Victoria!
Coonabarabran
is known as the Astronomy Capital of Australia - it is home to the Siding Springs Observatory - which is in an amazing setting on top of the Warrambungle Ranges. They are the proud keepers of THE Australia Telescope, which is housed in a 9 storey high dome, has a mirror almost 4 metres in diameter and is half owned by the Brits! Siding Springs has 11 other observatories dotted around there and several residents of Coona also have their own backyard observatories too. Why there? - clear skies, high altitude, open spaces and low light pollution. The public can’t actually look through the telescope as it is for the professionals, who come from all over to do their research. We were impressed by the fact that planes aren’t allowed to fly over there at night (must be an important place!)
Anyway, the first night at Coona we went along to Peter Starr’s (his real name!) observatory, which is in his front paddock, to observe the stars and learn a bit more about the night sky. Very interesting but it was freezing - had about 6 layers on but still froze! But the next day, we were treated to
another lovely sunny day and we went into the Warrambungles National Park for a picnic lunch and a walk up to Fan’s Horizon. A steep walk but rewarding - at the top of about 1,000 steps, there was a great outlook over the Warrambungles. As with most places we have visited so far, apart from the very dry areas of Australia, there was lots of birdlife and quite a variety of different species. To be continued….
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