Warrumbungle National Park

Australia really is a country with a diversity of amazing landscapes and today we visited one of the most spectacular.  It was only through talking to fellow travellers that we learnt a little about the Warrumbungles.  They told us we shouldn't bypass them if we are in the area and I'm so pleased we listened....

We are staying at the very spacious Getaway Tourist Park in Coonabarabran that is the closest town to the Warrumbungles.  This is a lovely park with very friendly owners who are happy to share valuable knowledge about the area.  On their advise they said to allow a full day to visit the National Park and even then you would only be able to choose a few of the many walks.

We set sail around 9am with a packed lunch and maps.  No relying on your phone in this area as signals are a bit hit and miss.  Our first stop was at the Whitegum Lookout that is just past Siding Spring Observatory. It was a gently 1km walk out to the lookout and we were afforded magnificent views of the Warrumbungle Range.  The information at the lookout was very good and explained in detail how two volcanic eruptions formed the Warrumbungle Range.  

Back in the car and the next stop was the Visitor Information Centre.  I can recommend stopping at these centres whenever you are spending time in a particular area as they have more detailed maps than you get online.  

We did the short scenic walk around the centre that gave us a great view of Siding Spring Observatory.  The Warrumbungle area has many observatories as it has one of the darkest night skies in Australia. We have booked into one of the observatories in Coonabarabran to see the night sky and have it explained to us by "Donna the Astronomer".

We continued  on our journey through the park and stopped at Split Rock Picnic Area for a walk that we thought would be interesting. We walked in the shadow of the towering Split Rock Mountain that is truly magnificent but the path was not well kept and Philip was having a little trouble with his knee so we turned around at the 1km mark.  We studied the map again and decided on Old Woolshed Picnic area for lunch with a walk to Tara Cave prior to lunch to build up our appetite.

The walk was 3.4km return with a Grade 2 moderate.  I would probably Grade it a 3 because it was quite steep in parts.  The walk itself was diverse and the path was a mixture of bricks, wood chip and natural.  It was easy walking until we had to ascend the mountain where, as I said, it was quite steep. BUT....the views from Tara Cave were incredible and well worth the bit of pain to get there.  We were up so high, and it felt like we were on top of the world.  I stood and wondered about the aboriginals that had probably stood in this exact spot looking at exactly the same view.  It was quite moving.

The return journey seemed to take us longer than the uphill but I think we were quite cautious walking down the steep incline.  We were starving when we finally arrived back at the picnic area and I was glad that I had packed plenty of food!

After lunch we continued our journey through the National Park and found an alternate route back to Coonabarabran.  It was a dirt road but we drove through some very interesting farming areas that were in stark contrast to where we had just been in the Warrumbungles.  It took us a couple of hours but we were back in camp by late afternoon and throughly enjoyed sitting down and toasting our day with beer, wine and Stanthorpe Cheeses...