a bit of dusty travelling

I’ve been away for the last week in Central NSW. We went to Narrabri, where I taught a two day Mountmellick class with the lovely ladies of the Narrabri Embroiderers Guild Group. Had a fantastic time!

It rained once for a few minutes while we were in Narrabri. In a time of such terrible drought, it was really exciting to look across the plains and see the lightning in the sky, and hear the frogs croaking, telling us it was about to rain. And rain it did! It was only short, but I guess you have to be thankful for whatever you can get!

My dad just happened to be in Narrabri while we were there, so we had a few meals with him, which was nice. While I was teaching, my family went off to visit the Narrabri Radio Telescope. They tried to visit Yarrie Lake for a swim, but it was completely dry, with grass growing on the lakebed.

The motel we stayed at was the Kaputar Motel. The welcome we received there was warm and friendly. The staff were great. If you don’t mind a fairly basic room, its a lovely place to stay.

After 2 days in Narrabri, we headed south to Coonabarabran via Pilliga Pottery, and spent a lovely few hours at the pottery. One of the staff gave each of my children a chunk of clay and just let them sit them and create while she got on with her work. We were able to watch her carving the patterns into the side of some vases, and watched her creating a pot on the wheel. Of course we bought some lovely pieces as souvenirs too. It was an enjoyable time.

In Coonabarabran (the Astronomy Capital of Australia) we visited the Diprotodon skeleton in the visitors centre. The Diprotodon was megafauna, like an enlarged version of a wombat. The bones were found nearby about 20 or 30 years ago.

In the evening we went to the Skywatch Obsveratory, but unfortunately they were booked out for the evening. The skies were clear and dark, so we decided to do a bit of our own skywatching. We bought a torch at Woolies, so that we could see our night-sky atlas in the dark, and looked up! It was amazing just how much more of the sky you can see out there. In Sydney we never get a good view of the Milky Way because there is just way too much background light in the atmosphere. But out there we could see definite smudges of white where the Milky Way stretched across the sky.

The next day we went out to Siding Spring Observatory, where the Anglo Australian Telescope (and quite a few other smaller telescopes) is. It is nestled in the Warrumbungles National Park, which has some spectacular rock formations, being the site of 2(?) very old volcanoes. Looking out west, past the National Park, it looked very very flat.

The observatory had a really interesting display all about space and light, and weightlessness etc. It was fascinating. Another time, sans children, it would be wonderful to read it all and take it in a little better! Then we went up to the dome and had a look at the telescope itself. Its huge! With a mirror of 3.9m diameter, that’s one big telescope! Siding Spring is the Observatory where Fred Watson is the astronomer in charge. Fred has regular spots on our local ABC radio and is a wonderful communicator and always great to listen to. We didn’t get to meet him, as I suspect he either wasn’t there, or was just slightly busy actually getting some work done! 🙂

In the evening we went back to Skywatch, having booked the night before. Unfortunately, there were rather a lot of clouds in the sky, and it looked like it was going to be a waste of time. They put on their “cloudy night presentation” which all seemed a bit dodgy, but part way through, one of the staff rushed in and said that Jupiter was visible. So we all raced up to the observatory and got to see Jupiter and three of its 70(!!) moons: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Io must have been hiding around the back of Jupiter. It was great to see this, and meant that we didn’t come away feeling diddled! When outside again, the staff member who was with us told us how to find various things in the sky with lots of comments like “if the clouds weren’t there, then what you would look for is…”. So that has given us something to look for on the next dark night out. Maybe during Earth Hour next year?

The motel we stayed at was really dodgy. The less said, the better!

The next day we went further south to Dubbo. Instead of taking the main route (the Newell Highway, through Gilgandra) we took a lesser-used route, through Mendooran and the GooNoo State Forest. The forest had obviously had a fire through fairly recently, and parts were just devastated. Because of the fire though, the grass trees were in flower, which was quite magnificent. We saw an emu cross the road in front of us at one stage.

In Dubbo, we first stopped at the Visitors Centre and collected some information on the town’s attractions. I noticed a pile of the Senior newspaper (NSW edition) which has my Grandma on the front cover this month! I had been wanting to get a copy, but didn’t expect to find one in Dubbo!

We went to a lovely pizza place for dinner that night, and would have happily taken the table we sat at with us. It was a gorgeous slab of wood with a lot of character! I always enjoy people watching, and we got to do a bit of that.

The next morning we were up VERY early so that we could be at the Western Plains Zoo at 6:30am. That may not sound so early to you, but it is when you’re on holidays, and when you have young children! We were taken on a 2 hour walk around the zoo by one of the Friends of the Zoo volunteers, and were allowed into some of the staff-only areas which are normally off-limits to the public. My youngest child was thrilled to see the giraffes up close as they are a huge favourite! It added something to the atmosphere of the group to have someone SO excited with us! 🙂

When the walk ended, we made our own way around the rest of the zoo. We saw the hippos being fed – what enormous things they are! We had a wonderful, but extremely exhausting day! We felt very pleased that we had made the effort to go to the early morning walk, as it really was excellent. To walk around in the cool of the day before we were all exhausted and before the animals were just lying around doing nothing because of the heat, was very worthwhile.

The next day was our journey home, but we stopped off at Wellington Caves on the way home. Then to Gulgong, which is a very pretty country town that we will definitely explore further one day!

As we made our way back to Sydney, we could see the smoke plume from a bushfire ahead of us in the distance. When we got to Bellbird Hill some time later, we drove through the fire, with smouldering and occasional flare-ups on either side of the road. I was not concerned for our safety as the firies wouldn’t have let us through if it had been too dangerous, but I was concerned about how scared my youngest child might have been. Not quite what we expected as part of our return journey!

And back to home it was, finding that our Cecile Brunner rose had exploded into flower in our absence! I think our next door neighbour thought I was mad when one of the first things I did on our return was to go out into the garden and cut some to bring inside to enjoy!