A Visit to Parkes, Cobar & Mudgee

The Bells Line of Road is a 59 kms alternative road (to the Great Western Highway) crossing the Blue Mountains. The road has been widened and better paved over the recent years to facilitate faster and safer through traffic. These upgrades have mitigated the horrific Victoria Pass of old….

This road took its name from explorer Archibald Bell Junior who at the age of just nineteen years crossed what was to become one of the most scenic routes across the Blue Mountains.

Sadly, it wasn’t scenic at all today. It hasn’t been scenic for the past few months as almost across the entire 59 kms we saw the burnt out remains from the devastating bushfires of just 9 months ago.

We passed through Lithgow around 12.30. Unknown to most Australians, Lithgow is actually the birthplace of Australia’s iron and steel industry. Constructed in 1913, the Lithgow Blast Furnace was at its peak producing 105,000 tonnes of pig iron for the Trans-Australia Railway. Lithgow was formally established by European settlers in 1824 although the villages around Lithgow were settled as far back as 1813 when explorers Blaxland, Lawson & Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains. By 1840, coal was discovered in the Lithgow region and subsequently began fueling the mushrooming Sydney colony. Lithgow has an extraordinary industrial heritage and well worth exploring for a day.

Following the “wars”, gold was discovered and the settlement ballooned to over 3,000 people which is turn fostered lawlessness, banditry and squatters before finally settling down to a growing agricultural industry.

Carcoar has only one main street and every commercial establishment (bar the pub) were closed. I guess it’s a due to a combination of it being Sunday and COVID-19.

The countryside between Bathurst and Parkes is breathtaking and expectedly so given that its Springtime and the drought has at long last, broken. Large pastureland with grazing sheep and cattle, an occasional farmhouse and are interspersed with equally large fields of Canola crop.

We finally arrived in Parkes around 5.00 staying at Station Motel.  I had phoned 2 days earlier to ensure that we had an upstairs room which management happily obliging AND located furthest from the road (as we are rural folk). After settling in we briefly explored our surroundings and eventually ended with having dinner at the Parkes Railway Hotel

Parkes is a region of stunning beauty when not a “prisoner” to drought. It is also home to the memorable annual Elvis Presley Music Festival. The town, established in 1839, is named after the former Premier of NSW and Father of Australia’s Federation, Sir Henry Parkes. Parkes surrounding region is an agricultural food bowl of NSW. Besides canola, beef and lamb, it’s also renowned for its wheat and wool produce.

We finally ended up exploring outside the complex and discovered the “whispering dishes”: an experience never to be missed by anyone visiting this place. These parabola curved dishes are placed distances apart and collect, focus and amplify wave signals, so Nanna and I each spoke normally into separate dishes some 60-70m apart WHILE facing AWAY from each other yet what we said was clearly relayed. Amazing! An interesting tidbit: numerous signs outside warning us that snakes abound in and around the site.

Parkes Radio Telescope is operated by CSIRO and it has been operating for more than 50 years, 24/7. It is and will continue to be at the forefront of international radio astronomy discoveries. It is one the largest radio telescopes in the world and we were told that today, the apparatus is 10,000 more sensitive than when first commissioned!

As a guide to this site’s importance and contribution to man’s knowledge around radio astronomy, half of the 2,000+ known pulsars have been found using this telescope! Equally important, the telescope ONLY receives radio waves…. it never sends any out.

Of course, the more widely known information about this telescope is its pivotal contribution in man’s first lunar landing and other subsequent spacecraft journeys.

Next day, we started out on our way Cobar but our first stop was Condobolin which geographically is EXACTLY in the heart of NSW and lies on the banks of the Lachlan River. Weather is starting to warm up out this way.

This Condobolin settlement was first established by squatters around 1815 and was mainly used as a stopover and a river-crossing in the “run” (meaning the route of moving stock) from north and west of NSW and VIC.

Until 1885, this settlement and huge surrounding region remained largely unchanged and activities were mainly concentrated on prime cropping and beef & sheep production.

In 1885 a major copper discovery near Melrose (close to Condobolin) was made and in 1894, a gold discovery at the Overflow Station was also made thus benefiting Condobolin.

Incidentally, the gold discovery led to Banjo Paterson penning the immortalized poem of “Clancy of the Overflow”. Banjo Paterson is of course our iconic Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood.

On leaving Condobolin I mistakenly took the Condobolin-Cobar Road instead of the Henry Parkes Way to Cobar as I had intended. Disastrous! The road was 249 kms long and turns out that half of it was unpaved. Nanna was most apprehensive as we hardly saw any traffic…. no exaggeration but we’d drive for 20 minutes at any time and we wouldn’t see any other vehicle….We did go through two “one-horse towns” …. Bodadah and Nymagee…. They each had about 100m of paved road through them! The countryside throughout this stretch was all flat farmland. The farms had to be vast in size as we rarely saw farmhouses. Many of the areas we passed were under cultivation while other areas were covered in spring colours. The weed Paterson’s Curse was quite dominant in parts but livestock know not to eat it.

Leaving the lookout, we then stopped at the iconic Cobar “sign & slag” dump clearly depicting the region’s principal activity. The sign is huge with rust-coloured metallic letters jutting out from a concrete wall on the side of an old slag heap.

The slag heap is actually the end product of some 50-years of copper smelting in the area. The huge slag heap still contains about 2% copper but presently, and despite the technological extraction advances made, it’s just too expensive to extract it. Today part of the slag is recycled into road base for use in the region.

Given the incredibly “red earth” of the soil, the “flatness” of the terrain and “sparse” vegetation, we felt that we’re really in Outback NSW.

Cobar, with nearly 5,000 people in the shire (the shire is nearly 2/3 the size of Tasmania!), came into existence in mid-1850s. Initially supporting pastoralists with huge land holdings such as Booroomugga Station (165.0kms2!), the settlement quickly changed direction when copper was discovered in the mid-1870s.

Today Cobar supports agriculture/pastoral (livestock, wool and cropping), mining (copper, zinc, silver, lead and gold) and tourism industries. Apparently, the name Cobar is aboriginal for “copper”.

Mining is the major source of employment, engaging some 35% of the population and so very dependent on world commodity pricing.

Traffic was reasonable on this very well-maintained and straight Barrier Highway (name derived from the Barrier Ranges) with the main traffic at this time being the “grey nomads” in their caravans and usually traveling in convoys of 2 or 3 caravan-towing cars.

Interspersed on this highway, massive 54.0m road-trains carrying anything from machinery to livestock to fodder and anything in between.

These road-trains are the lifeline of regional and country Australia. To be frank, they are behemoths and can be quite intimidating hence they are only allowed to travel on certain highways and certainly not in any metropolitan or town areas.

In fact Australia, out of necessity due to its remoteness and huge distances, has the longest and heaviest legal road trains in the world!

The entire drive to Mudgee was one of the most scenic and delightful drives we’ve ever undertaken in our traveling years in Australia. Spring activity was exploding everywhere and the constantly unfolding landscape beckoned us to take our drive easy and let our eyes feast.

This we surely did as we were blown away by the beauty.

We stopped briefly at Nyngan on the shores of the “cheekily named” Bogan River.

In 1990 Nyngan was totally devastated by floods. The floods triggered one of NSW’s most renowned humanitarian airlifts to save lives from the waters (even using helicopters from news companies), armed & civil services as well as private individuals. The ensuing rebuilding of the town ensured mitigation against a similar future catastrophe.

As we drove through the Nyngan region, we also passed by Australia’s largest photovoltaic power station which houses 1.36 million solar panels generating about 208K HP (for us “non-scientifically minded”)

At this time, the contour of the landscape began to change: from plains to undulating yet still retaining the Spring magnificence.

The remainder of the afternoon’s drive was uneventful. We drove through Gilgandra (alleged birthplace of the Australian call “coo-ee”) and Mendooran (known as the “Town of Murals” and the oldest town on the Castlereagh River).

Further on we drove through Dunedoo (alleged birthplace of the colloquial Australia toilet term, the “dunny”), Gulgong (world famous for its clay, home of Henry Lawson and both the town and Henry Lawson are featured on Australia’s $10 note) and finally on to Mudgee.

Hill End is a well-preserved historic gold mining “ghost town” and came into existence during the NSW gold rush of the 1850s.

At the height of gold mining activity in the 1870s, Hill End boasted a population of 8,000, 2 newspapers, 5 banks, 8 churches, 1 public school, 27 pubs, 1 brewery, over 200 registered businesses/companies. It was also here that the then world’s largest specimen of gold reef (286kgs!) was discovered. At that time, the Hill End goldfields became world famous as “the richest quarter mile in the world”.

Unfortunately, when the gold gave out, the decline was sad and within a space of 150 years the population went from 8,000 to just 75 people in 2020!

We eventually made our way back to Mudgee. On the way we stopped at the little hamlet of Hargraves and admired the peaceful surroundings. Every time we turned a corner, a Spring scene “jumped out at you” and in the process keeping a constant smile of happiness and contentment on our faces.

Moving on we browsed through a honey shop on the outskirts of Mudgee. Later in the evening we had dinner at the Lawson Park Hotel (the pub good friend Pete Christie advised us to visit…..we’d been to this pub once before some years ago). Just as well we’d booked the previous night as the bistro was packed and despite proper social distancing, the ambiance and crowd noise were equal to the pub being at pre-COVID intensity. Very good meal and staff typically country friendly.

We have truly enjoyed our week of “self-touring” regional NSW: a “tour” which continues to prove that one is never too old to see and learn😊.

We’d decided to return home via a different route (in part) because we were urged by a receptionist at Parkes Visitor Information Centre to view Capertee Valley from Pearson Lookout…. and so we headed towards Rylstone. The scenery is as picturesque as what we’ve encountered over the past few days. Incredibly, there are more blooming wattles in this region then we’ve seen before…. Unbelievable scenes of striking yellow for miles and miles. As we neared Rylstone, we encountered an extraordinary view: a couple of acres of prickly pear plants! …. and so, my immediate thought was that there must be Maltese about!

Incidentally, under the massive sandstone escarpments, enormous coal and oil shale deposits have been discovered (the quantity of which is said to be one of the largest in Australia!). From 1930-60 these were mined however they have now been locked away through government legislation and are never to be mined thus preserving the valley for future generations.

Back to the scenery from the lookout, we take in the impressive Pantoney’s Crown standing like a monolithic guard over the entire valley. It is quite dominant. We spent a while taking it all it and for me, briefly discovering this valley and lookout with Nanna is capping a perfect moment for me…. 2 hours later we were safely back home.