Capertee ... yes, I know ... WHERE???.... to Nyngan and beyond, not as we planned!

Capertee to Nyngan

Wed. 12^th Jan

A fascinating day’s travelling. We woke to morning misty showers after spending the night at a roadside stop, with the passing of trucks through the night. We decided that the weather limited sightseeing at the NP so we plan to revisit on our trip down the eastern side of the country in Nov. or Dec.  On, then, to Mudgee and beyond! Mudgee was a prosperous town set in a wine growing and agricultural region. The 1870s buildings have been well maintained and the wide streets are very attractive.

The beautiful Mudgee Railway Station

Henry Lawson's birthplace

Tourist information was excellent and we enjoyed wandering the streets with our historical building map. The enormous gothic-style Catholic church was indicative of the wealth of the early pastoralists and then the gold boom, although Henry Lawson’s works show the other side of the picture! Lawson’s birthplace was nearby but just a chimney left, however the Lawson museum at Gulgong was excellent and the whole town was still reminiscent of a gold town in many ways, with some streetscape preservation and narrow streets, worth a visit but a struggling town, I think.

We travelled on to Dubbo while listening to ‘The Loaded Dog’ and laughing at wry humour of the tale. Dubbo still bore evidence of a major flooding of the Macquarie River in December. Another big, well-maintained country centre. We didn’t visit the old gaol and apart from the Plains Zoo there wasn’t much for us, so on the road again as we were keen to head to the wild west! Out along flat, open roads – a complete change from the winding, hilly, narrow roads that we’d been travelling. Sheep and wheat country from Dubbo until we reached Nyngan where we stayed our first night in a caravan park. Yes, that shower was wonderful – our first since Canberra!

Nyngan is at the edge of the Outback and on the Barrier Highway to Broken Hill . A small town on the banks of the Bogan River, and explorer Thomas Mitchell camped at the site of the present-day town in 1835.  The Bogan River was up to the top of its banks and the water skiers were having a great time – this made fishing tricky! Mozzies drove us inside after dark.

 

Nyngan to Cobar and on to Wilcannia then beyond – wonderful and terrible

Thurs. Jan 13^th Happy Birthday Brydie

Awoke with the birds before 6 and settled down by the river to enjoy the sunrise and the early morning light and breeze. A hot, cloudy and windy day ahead with rain forecast.  Graeme tried to catch breakfast but just fed the fish.

We hit the road before 9! A record for us! And what a road ................... beauty of a different kind. Initially long flat plains with native cyprus pine and grey/green casuarinas and low shrubs set in saltbush and swirling light green grasses that gave way to open plains with fewer trees. At times there seemed to be an invisible border that designated immediate change in the vegetation – fascinating.

Cobar - pastoralists moved into the area in the mid-1860s and it was in 1870 that copper was discovered and the town sprang up. Cobar is a mining town, one of those deceptive country towns which can easily be driven through, but the superb Cobar Heritage Centre, the old open cut mines, and the homes and public buildings off the main road make it well worth a stop. It was obviously a wealthy town and one of the pubs has a verahdah over 100m long!

 The heritage centre was set in the copper mine’s Victorian administrative offices contained a wonderful display of the history of the area, copper mining and early life in the outback.  There was a train carriage that was used by the maternal health sister in the 1930s – reminded me of the wonderful book about a train that travelled through the Mallee - Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living.  

An interesting story about the naming of the town states that 'gubar', the Aboriginal word for red ochre, was simply corrupted to the Anglicised 'Cobar' when an old man was sitting down, making paint for corroboree. He was painting himself when a whitefellow came riding and asked what he was doing. 'I'm making paint for corroboree.’ He showed him the gubar, the red ochre. That's how they named Cobar. The old man showed him where it was, and it was copper worth thousands of pounds.

By 1871 the townsite had been surveyed and by 1876 the main mines had amalgamated to form the Great Cobar Copper Mining Company. The mines continued to operate until 1920. At its peak Cobar Pastoralists moved into the area in the mid-1860s and it was in 1870 that copper was discovered and the town of Cobar sprung up. The town and the surrounding villages and camp sites had a population of over 10 000 people. It was so prosperous that it even had its own stock exchange.
Cobar's population dropped to a little over 1000 during the 1930s and rose again to stabilise at around 3500 through the 1970s and early 1980s. However the opening of a silver-lead-zinc mine in the early 1980s gave the town a boost so that now the population is about 5300.
The CSA Mine (the letters stand for Cornish, Scottish and Australian) is now New South Wales' largest producer of copper and zinc.
Source- Sydney Morning Herald, Jan 11, 2011. http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-factsheet/cobar-20081113-5ypi.html

 Unfortunately heavy overnight rain in the Wilcannia and Broken Hill areas meant that many of the dry-weather roads were closed, including those to some of the National parks and Mount Grenfell, which has some of the finest examples of rock art in Australia - three main rock shelters with over 1300 richly coloured images including human and animal figures and hand stencils.  Next time, perhaps.

So, we continued on to Wilcannia, where we had planned to spend the night, but nothing prepared us for the ghost town that we found! Wilcannia is situated on the banks of the Darling River, which was running to the top of its banks. The main street of Wilcannia is lined with historic sandstone buildings – a superb police station, courthouse and others but every other building seemed to be boarded up or covered in iron bars. The only people we saw were a few Aboriginal people sitting, chatting, and a white barmaid helping an Aboriginal man by carrying a box of beer to his car. Oh, we did try to visit the Pioneer Museum but, despite the sign, the very abrupt woman at the government office told us it had closed down years ago! Like the town. Yet, once upon a time, Wilcannia was known as the "Queen City of the West “and it was the third largest shipping port in Australia. In the boom years of the 1880's sandstone was quarried locally for the beautiful buildings that stand today as a reminder of those days when the river was king.

Needless to say, we didn’t stay but decided to drive on despite the looming grey rain clouds .. and rain it did! The endless flat, treeless plains towards Broken Hill were green, indicative of earlier rain. In fact we later found out that Broken Hill had experienced over 150mm of rain in the past 3 days when the average annual rainfall is about 240mm. We passed flooded plains, orange creeks that carved red gorges in the desert, water slipping over the road and were thankful that we made it through to Broken Hill as this road, and the roads to Menindee Lakes, Silverton and Adelaide were later closed due to flooding.

A quick drive through Broken Hill indicated that we could easily spend time in this attractive and interesting town.