WARRUMBUNGLES

Early glimpse of Warrumbungles...... crooked mountain?


That's the "breadknife" sticking straight up on the left. Can you see the small tree on the top? A bit to the left. Right at the top.


Can you see that tree again? Just above the horizon. We have reached the mighty "breadknife".

Fay and I had 4 sleeps at the Warrumbungle National Park some 165 km north of Dubbo last week. Thanks Jan and Jim for taking us on a tag-a-long trip. (We both took our avans.)

We did some awesome walks including a 6 hour hike on day 1. It was pretty solid with some quite steep bits chucked in. There were times when some members of our group (there were only the four of us) chose to slide up or down on either all fours or even bottoms! Tricky stuff. Fortunately between Fay and I we had ONE GOOD KNEE. Unfortunately for Fay I was unwilling to share it. Jan's problem was that the length of her legs made it difficult to get up and down some of the roughly made steps.

Goanna, lizard, butterflies, wild goats, emus, roos, wallabies and one koala. Think that was the extent of the wildlife we came across during our stay.

They are doing work up there on some of the trails - putting in extra state-of-the-art steps which ceratinly make life easier. Material had to be dropped in by chopper for the work.

While there we went to the Crooked Mountain Concert (outdoor gig) with James Reyne, Felicity Urquhart, Adam Rennie and a band from Dubbo - Altitude. Turns out a few of the band attended Orana Heights Public School during my stint there. The drummer was only fourteen! Others ages between 15 and 19 I believe. Good kids even if I couldn't understand any of the words to their songs! I still remember the Stevenson kids from OHPS days.

The highlight for us was certainly the Breadknife Grand High Tops Walk (the six hour dude). We camped at Camp Blackman which had power, toilets, showers and water.

Ever been to the Warrumbungles? It was our first outing there. Won't be our last either.

If you check out photos 2 and 3 you might just be able to see a tree (small tree) at the very top of the tallest mountain. See it? Same tree in both photos. Then in photo #4 I've got a shot of it close up. Shows:

• how far we walked
• how good the zoom lens is on the Panasonic camera

We walked up to and along beside the "breadknife". Awesome. Looked like you could push it over; but I didn't try.