Travelling Australia - Journal 2010  http://www.travelling-australia.info

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12-20 October 2010 - Narrabri
Narrabri's economy relies on agriculture and the Namoi River. The region is devoted to growing grain, raising cattle and growing cotton. There are some coal mining ventures south of the town and the Council is keen to make the most of business opportunities arising from the coal industry; a consultant was engaged to prepare a 2007 report on the business options associated with coal. It is not clear whether this report has anything to do with the plans announced by the developers of a large underground coal mine 28 kilometres south of Narrabri to build a complex of 242 cabins for single workers in Narrabri. Cotton is a major product of the Namoi valley and a Cotton Centre was established in Narrabri to describe and explain the cotton industry to visitors. The centre explained in some details how cotton was grown and processed and was one of the reasons we had come to Narrabri but it was now closed, apparently not to re-open. Very disappointing. Narrabri is on the Newell Highway, that road transport artery between Melbourne and Queensland, and on the Kamilaroi Highway between Moree and Gunnedah. Narrabri is also served by the North-West Railway with one passenger train a day between Sydney and Moree passing through Narrabri. The line is also heavily used for grain in the harvest season. 12 October This morning began with fine weather so we started out on a tourist route from Narrabri along the Namoi floodplain to Wee Waa then returned to Narrabri via Lake Yawie and the Australian Telescope. The Telescope comprises six large, individual radio receiving dishes running on railway lines and electronically linked to form a larger, and more sensitive, radio aperture than would be physically practical. The site was chosen to be clear of radio interference from towns and cities.
	Radio telescopes between Narrabri and Wee Waa.
In the afternoon I drove up Mt Kaputer in the national park. There is a good quality bitumen road nearly all of the way to the National Park then good gravel for the last five kilometres. Inside the National Park was also gravel to begin with, sometimes with severe corrugations over short stretches. After 5.2 kilometres the road returns to bitumen, narrow in places, to within a kilometre of the summit. The bitumen is fairly recently laid, so recently that roadside signs warning of gravel roads are still in place. The final kilometre to the summit car park, and viewing platform around the summit survey marker, is only fair quality gravel but alright at slow speed. The summit is 1510 metres above sea level. The winter snow line is at 1200 metres but the weather above the snow-line is moderate enough to permit a eucalyptus forest to thrive at the summit. Cloud cover increased steadily all day and by mid-afternoon when I was at some of the lookouts on Mt Kaputar the cloud cover made photography less than ideal. The return drive was straightforward, mainly a matter of keeping the speed under control, especially on the numerous blind bends on narrow bitumen. 13 October Today we set off to have a look at Dripping Rock, a feature shown in tourist literature in the foothills of the Nandewar Range. We drove south from Narrabri on the Kamilaroi Highway turning left just past Baan Baa onto the Maules Creek Road. This was mostly good gravel, with long straight stretches through agricultural land; we passed wheat crops approaching maturity and land we assumed was newly planted cotton, or ready for cotton; with quite a few cattle and a handful of sheep. There were signs of irrigation in very level paddocks with perimeter berms or short siphon hoses for furrow irrigation; a surprising amount of the less efficient furrow irrigation. We passed a couple of open cut coal-mines with huge piles of overburden along the roadside.
	Hay bales after a good season in the Namoi Valley.
The Dripping Rock is at the end of a steep sides gully in the foothills of the Nandewar Range. Access is initially via a gravelled, signposted road but the road turns into tracks running across farm properties through gates (mostly already opened). About two kilometres short of the site we came up to the last gate, the road had become a narrow, overhung, single lane track passing though pools of water in the depressions, eventually we came to a sign saying no further for vehicles. We parked and I walked a 100 metres or so along the road then down a well maintained, narrow pedestrian track across a creek, to the pool with water dripping into it. The water was coming from a small, high waterfall into a pool about four metres up the cliff then dribbling out of this pool down the rock face so the name "Dripping Rock" is appropriate. After taking a few photographs I returned to the car and set off on the return journey to Narrabri.
	Grain flourishing near Bogabri.
We returned to the van for the rest of the day. A couple of friarbirds picking insects off the Pathfinder external mirror decided they didn't like the other friarbirds they could see in the mirrors and in the windows of the vehicle and tried pecking the intruders with noisy territorial cries. For a couple of hours they returned every ten minutes or so try and drive away the "intruders" then had a change of heart and ignored the images they could see. 14 October Weather forecasters were expecting tomorrow to bring a period of bad weather caused by interaction between warm, moist air flowing across northern New South Wales from near Darwin and colliding with a cold airmass from the Antarctic. This was forecast to bring strong winds, thunderstorms, heavy rain and the possibility of flooding to rivers on the western side of the Dividing Range including the Namoi River we were camped beside. After evaluating the rise in water level needed to flood our site we decided to stay put but did our food shopping today in case tomorrow was wet. Cloud increased in the afternoon as the two weather systems approached. Later in the afternoon I rolled up the awning in case of high winds overnight or tomorrow. 15 October Rain began falling, fairly gently, during the night and was heavier by morning. But the rain gauge had only 4 millimetres in it at 9 o'clock. Rain continued on and off all day, sometimes fairly heavy, most of the time light and scattered. Cloud was variable but often low and thick. By 9:00 p.m after the trough passed over us Narrabri had recorded 22.4 millimetres of rain since 9 o' clock in the morning. We stayed in the caravan all day, glad we had done the shopping yesterday and had no need to go out at all today. Very comfortable sitting snug in the caravan looking out at the rain and wet ground. There was not much sign of strong winds at ground level but we watched the tops of tall gum trees near us being violently moved by wind while the caravan wasn't moving at all in the wind; one river red gum near us had a 10 centimetre thick branch break off during a stronger wind gust. The Internet weather radar showed winds of 80 to 90 kilometres and hour over the whole region but without giving heights. 16 October Today we were in the cold air mass from the south which had contributed to yesterdays bad weather; there was a cold and biting wind but no rain. Various weather "experts" had predicted gloom and doom for yesterday, forecasting heavy rain, thunderstorms, strong winds and a high likelihood of flooding. We are set up about twenty metres from the Namoi River, a river notorious for floods, but the Namoi in Narrabri has been pretty much bypassed by other streams and doesn't normally flow; it remains a series of reedy waterholes. After the dire forecasts it hadn't even begun flowing, let along flooding. The water level in the waterhole in the riverbed has risen maybe half a metre but that's all. Heavy flooding has taken place around the Victorian/New South Wales border but the dire predictions, especially from the Channel 9 weather forecaster, of doom and gloom right along the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales were an exaggeration.
	The Namoi River at Narrabri is one of few rivers which have the river bed regularly mown. The Namoi is part of an anabranch system in which nearby "creeks" now carry the water through Narrabri leaving very little risk of flooding
17 October This Sunday in Narrabri was bright, sunny and cold. We went to McDonalds for coffee and Coles for the Sunday papers; except for the hardware shops very little else was open. In the afternoon I drove south along the Kamilaroi Highway to the Namoi River and Boggabri taking photographs. 18 October The morning was sunny with a blue sky and I decided to go to Mount Kaputar National Park to get better photographs from lookouts than I had been able to get last week in cloud and poor visibility. But as I was leaving Narrabri on the Mt Kaputar Road I passed a sign saying the Park was closed; when I rang the National Parks office they said the park was closed because the roads were blocked by trees blown down over the weekend; they expected to open the park later in the afternoon. Instead of going to Mount Kaputar I drove to Sawn Rocks which was a rock formation of pillars formed when lava cooled very slowly. Three of the four floodways on the road had water up to 10 centimetres flowing across them, to be taken slowly. Access to the Sawn Rock formation from the car park is via a short bitumen track merging with aluminium walkways. 700 metres each way. 19 October A sunny morning with no cloud in sight. After packing lunch I set off to drive in the Mt Kaputar National Park. The access road was still remarkably good quality bitumen then gravel before and after the entrance to the park, with some severe corrugations on one or two bends. Then a return to bitumen. As the road ascended, the meaning of the phrase "trees across the road" became clear. Many large trees had fallen partly or fully across the bitumen and had been cut off and dragged aside. The higher I went the more tree damage there was. At the very top, around Dawsons Spring, whole tree trunks half a metre across had been snapped off a few metres above the ground; other trees of the same size had been uprooted and were lying along the ground still attached to the roots which were out of the ground. Nearby very large branches had been ripped off trees and dumped on the ground nearby. The National Parks people had been very busy with chain saws removing trees from the access roads but tree trunks and branches still covered the walking track between Dawsons Spring and the Summit. I went to the summit lookout for some photographs in good weather and took quite a few from other, lower, lookouts with a better view. Then returned to Narrabri.
	Sawn Rock formation within Kaputar National Park formed when lava cooled so slowly that the crystalline structure of the rock determined the rock shape.
20 October This was our last day in Narrabri after we had extended our original week long stay by three days to complete all of the photography and sight-seeing to be done in this region. Today bright sun and blue sky greeted us this morning although the night had been cool at times. The day was spent finishing off some photography. Late in the afternoon I rolled up the awning ready for departure tomorrow.

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