August 23: Coonabarabran
Well everyone was on their best photographic behaviour today after yesterday’s chiding…in fact Sally took SO many pictures, she received a distinction for her performance!
Beautiful morning in Coonabarabran. Warm enough to eat our breakfast outside, after Sally had prepared a scrumptious spread.
Off to the Warrumbungles. First stop was Whitegum lookout which has one of the best views of the park’s impressive volcanic landscape.
Sally found some flowers to smell on the way up and we found some glorious wattle to stand in front of.
The volcano began to form 17 million years ago and pushed through the ancient Pillaga sandstones when much of Australia was covered by inland seas (more on Pillaga sandstone later).
We did another couple of small walks, one around the visitors centre, before heading off to Siding Springs, which is Australia’s largest astronomy research facility and has a gorgeous outlook.
There’s a great exhibit which describes the different types of telescopes, including the latest robotic one, the Skymapper, and has some fun features. For example, I wouldn’t want to live in Jupiter because I would weigh a tonne. Give me Mars.
Here’s Les getting in on the act! And below you can see the Skymapper in the distance
We thought the telescope was closed for maintenance today ( well, at least, there were no tours happening) but we were fortunate enough to run into a visitor who showed us how to visit the telescope.
We were all hanging out for a real coffee by the time we arrived at Siding Springs so we had a quick lunch (ham and cheese rolls) with our coffee. The only other patrons in the restaurant were a partially blind man with his gorgeous black labrador guide dog, and his wife. We learnt that he could take his dog on the plane with him, and that there are now doggie toilets at Sydney and Melbourne airports.
Off to see the sandstone caves at Pillaga ( perhaps they came into existence when the volcano pushed through ….well, that’s my theory!)
They were quite magnificent as the pictures below attest.
For dinner we had selected the Lotus restaurant at the Coonabarabran golf club. It was typical Australian Chinese fare, with one of those moving centres on the table. The wine and meal were both incredibly cheap.
