We have left the icebox called Glen Innes and have been in Narrabri for the last 3 days. It was great to see the temperature gauge in the Jeep giving the outside temp. in double figures. Anything over 5C was much appreciated.
We are staying in the Showgrounds of Narrabri, along with probably another dozen vans. The best thing about staying in these places is that you have as much room as you like to spread out. There has been a lot of rain lately, 6 inches in the last few weeks, according to the info centre lady. All of this rain is great for the local area, but the camping area is very wet underfoot, with lots of little lakes spread through the grounds.
We arrived Thursday afternoon and just vegged out around the van. Friday morning it was off to the Info centre to get updates on all of the local attractions. We have settled on Sawn Rock and the CSIRO Telescope array. There are other attractions here, ie Sculptures in the scrub, Pilliga Thermal baths and a few waterfalls, but, with all of the rain, it is not recommended to go off the road in search of them. The Pilliga Thermal baths are very popular, but every time we have attempted to go out there it has been under water.
One of the things we would love to see in this area is the Cotton crop. Sadly, we have been too late again, as maybe Easter is the latest you have to be up here. At least Deb got in a huge cotton Header inside the Info Centre for a bit of a drive. Just kidding. They had a completed bale of cotton in there as well, with a weight of 220kg. It took a bit of lifting to get it into the back of the jeep.
From there we drove about 40 k's out to Sawn Rock. This is a really unusual rock feature and well worth the drive. As a geological feature it was pretty cool. The rocks were formed when basaltic lava flow cooled slowly and evenly, allowing the crystals within the molten rock to align perfectly. The feature is referred to as 'organ pipes', and if you look at the rocks you can see why. It is unreal how so many of the columns are in perfect pentagon and hexagon shapes that all fit perfectly into each other. According to the blurb, 'a spectacular example of regular geometric columns. Never thought I would turn into a geologist did you.
That was enough excitement for the day as we then checked out the town area. A bit of activity, with horses and cattle being dropped off at the showgrounds, but of course, we had no idea why. I must say, not a lot to write about. They do have a large theatre here, with lots of sports grounds, but not much else. The lack of a good café in the town is also a downer, but the main problem is they don't have a fish and chip shop in the town. How primitive is that.
Come Saturday morning and we were woken by loud speakers over in the showgrounds proper. That was fine, but it started at 7.15am. The woman's voice on the loudspeaker wasn't very clear, so we still had no idea what was happening.
After breakfast I strolled over to the showgrounds oval and, using all my detective skills, ascertained that an event was taking place involving said horses and cattle. I stayed and watched it for about an hour and worked out what was taking place. It was actually the annual Narrabri campdraft.
I got some snaps of the cowboys taking part, and I must say, I was a bit disappointed. Whatever happened to the rough and tough Australian cattleman of the past.
Back to business, as I knew you would ask, so here goes. What is a Campdraft. From what I can work out, there is a corral with lots of cattle locked in, and the object is for the horseman to ride in and pick out his particular cow, and then they open the gates and he chases his cow out onto the arena. The object appears to be that he has to direct his cow around a set of bollards, getting around as many as he can until his or her time runs out. I think there were probably just as many women as men taking place in this event and it was a bit addictive watching it. It is probably a bit like orienteering for cattle.
After that stimulating morning we headed out to check out the Australian Telescope Compact Array, about 25 k's from town. I know what you're thinking, how exciting, but it was very interesting. It is called a Compact array as there are 6 huge radio telescopes out there. The diameter of each dish is 22 metres and they each weigh 270 tonnes. It is a huge operation out there, as the telescopes are all sited on a railway line so that they can be moved, depending on where they want to point there telescopy bits. How's that for technical talk.
The railway line they are on is 3 kilometres long, with the tracks being 9 metres apart. There are only 5 telescopes in this location, with the 6th one being at a set location 5 kilometres away. As a bit of a science lesson for you all, the telescopes are all interconnected, with the result being that they have the same effect as if it was one telescope with a 100 metre wide dish. Being able to move them around gives them huge scope for astronomical research. I actually thought we were going out to see some huge cool telescopes, that we could look through at the man on the moon, or the inhabitants of Venus and Mars, but these were still pretty good. There are only a dozen similar type set ups in the world, with ours being renowned as one of the best. I would only confuse you if I told you how they work so you will just have to read a couple of the attached photos. Awesome huh.
Of course, had the customary Mother and Joey hopping around the car park area.
We then checked out a local lake, trying to get some photos of the local birdlife, but they were not co-operating so it was back in to town. Had a lukewarm coffee at the local bakery and after re fuelling, it was back to the showgrounds. Took some more photos of the campdraft, but basically just relaxed for the rest of the afternoon.
Tomorrow it is off to Parkes so I will speak to you soon.
Barry and Deb.
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