Coonabarabran & Warrumbungles

2024-11-09

This post is part of the series Blue Mountains Roadtrip.

For our first day of our NSW road trip we wanted to get to Coonabarabran, which is a bit over 6 hours drive from Toowoomba. So we left early (we saw heaps of animals on the road - kangaroos, wild pigs, even a fox) and timed it so we'd get there a bit before 7:00 for the Goondiwindi ParkRun.

The walk along the Macintyre River was really nice, and was a great spot to stop for breakfast and the first playground for the kids (of many).

We had planned to stop in Moree and maybe go to the Aquatic Centre, but the kids were asleep so we drove through to Narrabri where we stopped for lunch.

Leaving Narrabri was saw our first few planets along the Virtual Solar System Drive - there will be more on these later. They weren't sign posted so we drove past Neptune as we weren't expecting it, but pulled over for Uranus. We completely missed Pluto earlier which obviously still counted as a planet when they built the models. The scale really is mind-boggling vast.

We pulled off the highway to see the Pilliga Sandstone Caves. Confusingly there was no sign to turn off and it looked like some random forestry road, but the actual walk itself was great. We had a bit of a rough start putting on sunscreen and due to the heat - as well as instantly needing to find a toilet which did exist but was a little way into the walk and also not signed. But once we got to the actual caves the kids really enjoyed it and we saw a goanna at the end which they found exciting.

It was then just a short drive to Coonabarabran, with a quick stop to see Saturn.

The information centre was quite nice too, they had a bunch of free maps and a little museum.

The Warrumbungles is a Dark Sky Park which basically means super low light pollution. Our hotel even had signs saying to make sure you close the blinds at night so as not to ruin the experience - although super annoyingly the hotel had a giant spotlight running the first night which meant you couldn't see much at all. The second night they had it off at least and we could (just barely) see Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS with the naked eye, but pretty clearly with binoculars. The stars were probably on par with what we used to see at Emu Park as kids, although they might better in that National Park proper. I did try to take a long-exposure photo but without too much success.

We tried a few short hikes with the kids with some success - we had a few false starts and tantrums from Lyra but eventually managed to do the Wambelong Nature Walk and the short walk behind the information centre.

The kids were pretty over it afterwards though so Rachael and I had to take it turns to see the Whitegum Lookout (even though it was only a super short walk) while the other stayed with the kids at the car (the first of many such times). Even the drive in and out of the park was quite nice though.

We then finished off the solar system drive, with the inner planets along the way up to "the sun" being the Siding Spring Observatory. There is a free little museum and cafe there and you can even go inside to the telescope. The views from the lookout there are pretty spectacular also.

We took the kids back for a nap, and Rachael stayed at the hotel while I went back and tried to sneak in one more hike.

I was going to do the start of the Breadknife Hike which is meant to be one of the best walks in Australia but it said would take 5-6 hours and so I was just going to see how far I got in an hour and then turn around. Turns out the time estimate is very pessimistic so I ended up doing the whole thing in a bit under 3 hours. To be fair there were a lot of stairs and I was jogged several bits of it to make sure I didn't take too long.

It was crazy just how well built-up and maintained the track was - a lot of it was paved and not really what I would call a hike.

The bread-knife is pretty insane up close. Just a sheer cliff face which when you come around the corner later you realise is actually super thin.

The views at the top were incredible

It looked like they were doing some work to the path at the top of the cliff,with a helicopter dropping off bags of rocks up the top.

The walk is a loop, heading back down the other side of the mountain but the Western part was less maintained and the view not as great. I did see more animals on this side though - there was a even a bunch of wild goats in the National Park which was a little unexpected.

The next morning we had a quick walk along the creek (and used the playground) before leaving.

We did quickly stop at the Crystal Kingdom which was a shop with a gold-coin donation museum that was pretty cool.

We stopped for lunch at Mudgee which was a cool little town, and popped into a winery off the highway on the way out also.

After a nice drive, Pearson's Lookout gave us our first view of the Blue Mountains.