Followup from post id 21227
We spent our first night at Canobolas
State Forest near
Orange, great
views on the way up and down, but the highlight was the moonless starry night.
The next day we spent some time at "The Dish", north of Parkes; impressive, especially if you get to see them move the damn thing, we made our way to
Goobang National Park.
We took the Trewilga-Yeoval Rd which cuts through the centre of the park and half way through is
the entrance to the Sawpit Gully Track. We followed this north for about 5kms to the Greenbah
camping area. Its a nice
well wooded area, although dry at the moment you could imagine it being quite pretty if it greens up; the facilities have been upgraded with a
toilet (quite good for a long drop), no water, picnic tables, just one bbq pit, and some landscaping.
The next day we continued North through the park along a 4WD only track; this was very pleasant drive, with a steep descent down loose
rock slopes near the end.
At this end is the Wanda Wandong
camping area, a large open area, not so many trees, and again would look great when green.
2WDs can get to both of the camping areas at either end of the park, they just can't take the short cut directly through to the other.
From here, we hit the Tomingley Rd, then the Newell Hwy into Dubbo.
We thought we'd settle for comfort and stayed for 2 nights at the Dubbo City Caravan park, nicely shaded and clean. But after two good sleeps in the bush, the noises of the city of Dubbo and a boofhead camper who snoozed his alarm twice from 5am kept me from enjoying some solid kip.
The highlight of Dubbo is the Zoo. We made our way there for the breaky tour which started at 6:45am. We expected a few folks to be there, but not the long queues that awaited us at the drive through. We got in OK, and joined about 25 others in our group (which was just one of a number of groups) for an informative 2 hour guided tour. After a hot breakfast we grabbed an electric cart for 3 hours to zip around the Zoo; nice to drive the silent cart compared to the diesel Patrol for a change :-)
One benefit of doing the early tour is that animals are fairly active, compared to later on. A real bonus was the Siamang Gibbons; these guys are active and make incredible noises that can be heard up to 4kms away, amazing.
After one more night, we made our way back to
Sydney over the mountains along the Bells Line of Road (as opposed to the highway through
Katoomba etc). This is a very picturesque road that takes you past the famous Zigzag railway as
well as turn offs to magic
places like
Mount Wilson, a very picturesque village with autumn colours at their best.