On our final night in Dubbo we had a very nice meal at one of the Vietnamese restaurants in town. Our host was a Vietnamese woman of indetermined age who had migrated from a village near Hoi Anh on Vietnam’s central coast. She was interesting in two way. Firstly, she was not part of any refugee group as we might have expecteda a decade ago; she simply decided to migrate here to live. Secondly, after swapping our stories, she told me, surprisingly, that I was the first peron she had ever met who had been involved in the Vietnam War. She was born well after the war ended and neither her parents or grandparents were ever in the military. It seems that time is moving on very positively.
Thinking of war, our first stop was at Gilgandra for a coffee and a visit to the (new) local informaton centre and art gallery. This town’s greatest “claim to fame” is the Coo-ee March in 1915 when patriotic men from the community marched nearly 500 km to Sydney during World War I to draw attention to the need for recruitment. They started with 35 recruits and had over 350 by the time they reached Sydney. It was the first of many similar long distance marches and was celebrated by the town during its centenary in 2015. There are some interesting photos of tis event in the informaion centre.
Apparently, going to war for these men was quite an adventure. Some of the banners thay carried had words such as ‘Next Stop Berlin’. Most of them expected to be home again by Christmas. I wonder how many actually returned? The mortality rate for Australians in WW1 was 14.4%, exceeded only by New Zealand’s 14.5% The ANZACs had the highest rate of causalties of all the Commonwealth Forces because of the type of trench war where one died very quickly ‘going over the top’. Another contributor was that the Britsian supplied all the support services leaving the majorit of our men in fighting roles. By comparison, the mortality rate amongst Australian troops in Vietnam was less that 1%
Gilgandra is alo know for its windmills. There were 300 of them in operation around the district by the 1950s. They were used to pump up sub-artesian water until 1966. They were vital to the reliable water supply of the town and the surrounding properties.
I made something of a mistake along the way to the town of Coonabarabran when I chose a turn off that took us to the Warrambungle National Park. It chewed up a lot of our time and left us later than we wanted by the time we left.
The Warrumbungle Range (of which the National Park is part) is a 130 km spur of the Great Dividing Range. It was created by volcanic action and its most striking formations are plugs which solidify i the throat of the volcanoes. Thes result in dramatic ridges, spires and domes. We could get a good view of he range from the little village of Toorawheena.
This area was a soldier setlement area after WW1 where returned men were allocated (generally inhospitable) parcel of land to farm. A statue by the roadside shows a digger removing his uniform and picking up a plough to commemorate this.
It has been a warm day and not withstanding a steady breeze, one in which we could have our fisrst roadside picnic lunch. We stopped at a place in the national park where there had once been a shearing shed. There were toilets, and a table with seats but the litle creek weas dry and had an interesting exposed pattern on the dry creek bed.
After lunch, he road became winding and a little narrow with occasional views of some of the peaks.
On one of the peaks is the Siding Springs Observatory. Its huge telescope can been seen from on the top of the Warrumbungles from the surrounding countryside. It is reached by a 5 km side road that climbs steeply to the peak on which the observatory is located. This observatory is internationally important. It has the largest optical research telescope in Australia (3.9 m). The Visitor Centre includes an interactive exhibition, a theatrette with a short film, a science gift shop and the Exploratory Cafe.
The Warrumbungles near here are, apparently, an ideal place for stargazing with a combination of relatively high altitude, low humidity, a non-turbulent atmosphere, clean air and an average of 70% clear night skies. Never have the stars looked so bright in the night sky.
We rejoined the Newell Higfhway at Coonabarabran realising that it was afer 2.30 pm and we still had 240 km to travel to our overnight stop at Moree.
We picked up a little time driving around 90 kms north through the Pilliga Forest, north of Coonabarabran. There is nothing worth stopping for and taking up time. The forest is a remnant of semi-arid woodland area which covers more than 500,000 hectares. Although the area is now dominated by cypress pine (reputedly the largest cypress pine forest in the Southern Hemisphere) it also has hundreds of other plant species which, inevitably, means it has spectacular flowers in spring and summer.
Eventually we came to the town of Narrabri which apart from its enormous grain silos was similar to other NSW rural towns. It had the usual courthouse, police station and a run of shops down the main street.
The surrounding area of the Moree Plains is a flat fertile cropping area. We passd enormous fields of canola that were just becoming their wonderful yellow colour. Each little setlement aling the way had impressively sized silos and an occasional long grain train in the railway sidings.
We pushed on through the last 100 km to reach Moree by 5.00 pm. It was a bit later than we might have liked but we will look around the town in the morning.
