Following yesterday’s visit to the Warrumbungle Observatory, we are aiming for the high ground and a very special place in the Astronomical world, a place that puts Australia very much on the International stage. Today we are visiting the Siding Springs Observatory high on the edge of the Warrumbungle National Park.

Our short drive from Coonabarabran takes us past the Warrumbungle Observatory but then takes a narrow, winding road up into the peaks of the Warrumbungle mountain range to Mount Woorut. With amazing views through forests still recovering from a devastating fire in 2013, the blackened trees give a surreal view of the landscape but allow the underlying mountains to show their true shape and colour.

It is much cooler at this altitude and sadly the clouds rolled-in overnight spoiling the views from the summit. But we were here to see the observatory itself.

First stop was the cafe that serves an excellent coffee equally appreciated by TV’s Professor Brian Cox according to a note he left at the cafe. He’s made three visits so far so he must really like the coffee here.

Joining the cafe is an exhibition space that details the history of the observatory, its very close ties with the UK, many of its discoveries and ongoing work helping to develop the next generation of large telescopes, the Giant Magellan Telescope due for completion in 2025.

Australia is a 10% partner in the 25-metre GMT project and is playing a major roll building two of the first-generation instruments as well as key components of the adaptive optics system. When completed it will provide the sharpest detailed images of any telescope, nearly 10-times better than Hubble and 3-times more detailed than the yet to be completed and launched James Web Telescope.

The Anglo-Australian Telescope

The largest telescope onsite is the 3.9-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope and currently the largest optical telescope in Australia. Among many discoveries the AAT has identified clouds near the surface of Venus, observed the explosion of a Supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud in 1987 and measured the rate of the Universe’s expansion with unprecedented accuracy. This, in part, helped lead to the discovery of what is currently known as Dark Energy.

Just one of forty telescopes installed at Siding Springs, the AAT is joined by SkyMapper, a robotic telescope, which is creating a detailed survey of the southern sky and when complete will contain data on more than a billion stars and galaxies.

The Advanced Technology Telescope

The 2.3-metre Advanced Technology Telescope is used to study new objects discovered by SkyMapper in greater detail. This process allowed astronomers to identify the oldest known star in our Milky Way, believed to have been born shortly after the Big Bang approximately 13.7-billion years ago.

Siding Springs provides facilities for an International audience and hosts several instruments for other countries including the USA, Poland and Korea. One large rectangular building houses a group of remotely operated telescopes under a global system known as iTelescope.net, which allows both professional and amateur astronomers to remotely access the telescopes via the Internet, something we will have to give a try.

How many new discoveries will there be in years to come from instruments such as the Giant Magellan Telescope? Will we ever learn of life on another planet? Can we really be alone is this vast universe?

One thing we have learned over the past two days looking up at the sky, listening to the guides and viewing through the telescopes, is just how insignificant our little blue and white planet really is.

We’re on the move again leaving Dubbo behind and heading for our next stop at Coonabarabran – a Dark Sky town. First though is a planned visit to Jayco in town for a couple of issues with our caravan to be fixed, the main one being a safety recall for the gas heater, which is now very much needed with the cold nights we are experiencing. We had tried to get the heater looked at by Jayco in Orange but after three promises to check it, a denial there was such a recall and two no-shows we gave up. And our caravan site was directly behind Jayco’s service centre!

Conjuring up a brew

While our van was in the Dubbo workshop we enjoyed a coffee and a bite to eat at our latest favourite eatery – The Alchemy – just around the corner. Another one for our highly recommended list. And in just a couple of hours our van was ready to hit the road again. Excellent service and very helpful staff at Jayco Dubbo.

Shortly after leaving Dubbo we were surrounded by a vast, flat expanse of bone dry farmland. The only colours being the pale green leaves of the gum trees and a parched red soil. Where verdant grass pasture should be there was little but dry grass for the sheep and cattle to eat relying instead on feed and supplies of straw and hay transported by road trains into the region. It is a sad sight and one in desperate need of sustained rainfall.

The roads here are long and straight with just rest stops and small towns breaking the sameness of the surroundings. Strangely, though, it is an interesting and enjoyable drive, a change of driving style, more relaxing, and much smoother.

Coo-ee!!  

We made our first stop at Gilgandra, a small township on the A39 just short of halfway to our destination – Coonabarabran. Gilgandra is known as ‘The Town of Windmills’ for its windmill collection showing the development over fifty-years of this important technology, one that was vital for the region to develop its farms.

Gilgandra is more commonly renowned for its ‘Coo-ee March’, also known as the ‘Gilgandra Snowball’. In 1915 a group of 20-men set off from Gilgandra to Sydney determined to enlist for the war effort. As a recruitment drive the group eventually totalled 300 by the time they reached Sydney triggering many similar marches from within New South Wales and Queensland.

Leaving Gilgandra behind and the journey gets even more interesting as the straight roads end and we see our first view of the Warrumbungles – a large range of volcanic mountains rising straight out of the flat plains. It’s a surprise both from its sudden appearance but also its range of round-topped peaks. At the same time the road becomes increasingly hilly and eventually makes a steady but steep climb over the mountains before dropping down into the town of Coonabarabran, widely known as Australia’s top location for astronomy.

It is no coincidence that we chose Coonabarabran as a place to visit on our trip and its astronomy background. We had hoped to do a night viewing at one of the observatories and we had managed to book with the Warrumbungle Observatory for tonight and it was to continue, as today, with a completely cloudless sky. We knew it was also going to be cold and after parking and setting up the van we wrapped-up and headed out of town to the observatory.

Igloos in the Outback?

Being very wary of any wildlife that may run out in front of us, we drove well below the speed limit keeping an eye out for the observatory. What we hadn’t expected was its location and size. Looking more like a group of igloos in someone’s front paddock were the five miniature white domes housing a variety of telescopes. Equally unexpected was what we saw when we got out of the car and looked upward – millions of stars and the huge expanse of the Milky Way right above us. We had both seen the Milky Way while at the Grand Canyon in America but here was a complete lack of light pollution from street lights or neighbouring towns, this was a true Dark Sky location and the reason for some of Australia’s biggest and most important optical telescopes to be built here.

We joined a small group of visitors in the dark and listened to a presentation from our astronomer guide as he pinpointed many of the stars and galaxies that we could clearly see above and around us. Once your eyes have adjusted to the dark they become a million times more sensitive and you soon realise the sky isn’t really all that dark at all, the whole sky glows with the light of countless billions of stars.

Eagerly we made our way to four telescopes that had been setup for us pointing to well known stars and the Large Magellanic Cloud. What looks like a fuzzy pale cloud to the eye becomes a staggering mass of stars through the telescope and we were only looking at a tiny portion of it. Believed to contain at least 30-billion stars we were looking at light that has taken 158,200-years to reach us. Many of those stars will have since faded away but it could be thousands or hundreds of thousands of years before we would know.

Over the next 45-minutes the telescopes were pointed at increasingly interesting stars and galaxies including the famous Sombrero galaxy. But the highlight of the night is the use of the largest telescope under the protection of its $80,000 dome aimed at Eta Carinae and having photos of it taken with our cameras attached to the telescope. And I forgot to put a memory card in my camera!! Fortunately Catherine had one to hand that I could use.

170-years ago Eta Carinae underwent a titanic blast that at the time made it the second brightest star in the Milky Way but has puzzled astronomers ever since. Somehow the star survived its outburst and remains one of the brightest and most massive stars in our galaxy. It is 5-million times brighter than our own sun.

Once everyone had left, and all the car lights were gone, I got the chance to take a couple of long exposures of the Milky Way with a 24mm lens, which turned out to be much better than I had expected.

It was a fascinating though bitterly cold night but absolutely worth it.

Dubbo has a few attractions of note, the most obvious being Taronga Western Plains Zoo, a major drawcard for the region. Opened in 1977 it was constructed to provide room for many of the grazing animals that required more space than available at the existing Taronga Zoo in Sydney. In addition to the large range and display of animals, the zoo also runs a successful breeding and conservation project.

So why did we choose not to visit when we’re only 2KM away? Well, we have both visited major wildlife parks recently with family, and the cost, $86. Admittedly the tickets are valid for two days but would you really need to spend two days wandering around a zoo?

Narromine

So, instead, we decided to head out of town through open farmland to Narromine 40KM west of Dubbo. The childhood home of former Australian and international cricketer Glenn McGrath. A couple of kilometres further on was our intended destination, the Narromine Aviation Museum.

The Wright Flyer

The museum is full of unexpected surprises. Recently expanded, the museum is home to the world’s first flying replica of the Wright Flyer of 1907 and local guides tell the story of its construction and first flight. Only a few variations from the original, for safety reasons are, a modern engine, radio, gearbox and a seatbelt! It is a work of art and an absolute tribute to Keith and Eric Hayden who laboured over it from just a set of plans.

The adjacent airfield goes back to the early 1900’s and was a major flight training site during World War II. The famous Mosquito flying 618 Squadron were briefly based here after leaving the UK on a secret mission to the Far East that never came to bear.

Following the end of the war the Mosquito aircraft were sold to local farmers who’s only interest were the nuts and bolts that could be re-used and, sadly, the rest of the airframes were buried. Fortunately several of the iconic Rolls Royce Merlin engines survived and a couple of examples are on display at the museum.

Since 1940 Narromine Aerodrome has been recognised as one of the world’s premier gliding destinations due to its location surrounded by an expansive flat landscape, ideal for generating thermals. In 2015 The Junior World Gliding Championships we held here and in 2022 it will host The World Gliding Championships.

We have grown quite fond of Orange with its wide range of eateries, coffee shops, open parklands and friendly atmosphere but, after our extended stay in Orange, it is time to move onwards on our great adventure. Next stop Dubbo.

A little diversion

During our visit at Molong we were made aware of an alternative route to Dubbo avoiding the highway but with the opportunity of seeing plenty of ‘wildlife’. We were advised it was a narrower road than the highway with few places to pull-over and stop once on the road with the exception of the townships of Cumnock and Yeovil. As it was Anzac Day there was also little chance of anywhere open to eat so Catherine prepared some cheese rolls for the trip.

Molong… again

The route took us initially to Molong again and hope of a coffee stop before we reached our turn for our alternative route. No chance there, the town was closed for an Anzac Ceremony and the road partly blocked by horses so we had to do an about turn with the caravan in tow. It’s fortunate that roads are so wide in the old towns and just wide enough for us to turn around without too much embarrassment. We were to have a similar issue at Cumnock with a Ceremony taking place and spilling out onto the high street.

Animals on Bikes

Just past Molong we turned-off onto Obley Road and onto the Animals on Bikes trail. I’d better explain: In 2009 local farmers, farmers’ wives, Men’s Sheds, a bus driver, pre-school children and playgroup mums created 45 sculptures made from scrap materials scavenged from local farms and depicting various animals riding bicycles. The idea being to help boost the region and attract visitors from the Mitchell Highway to the suffering country towns and farms following years of drought. There are now over 100 on display and more added every 2-years. It’s a very creative way to make use of scrap material and have a lot of fun at the same time. And it has to be the best ‘I-Spy’ to keep the children (and most of the adults too) occupied along the drive to Dubbo.

Practice your A to Z

For the kids there is also an A to Z of animals to spot spaced every 4KM, although it appears there was an issue trying to find an animal who’s name began with an ‘X’ and so a Fox had to do. Well, what about the Xiangcheng toothed toad??

We passed Rosie the Redback spider, Elvis the Kookaburra (that’s one for Parkes), Evil Ken the Weevil and Camouflage the Emu – though we never saw the Emu.

It’s not the best of roads, narrow in places, rough in many and a short section of dirt road currently being prepared for the black top. I’m sure it is a lot more comfortable in a car not towing a large caravan, but with all the ‘animals’ there are plenty of distractions to keep you and your passengers occupied for a couple of hours. And so from that perspective we’d recommend taking the side road and avoiding the Mitchell Highway.

Sure, it’s not as old as, perhaps, the Sydney Botanic Gardens but there are a large number of very mature trees and shrubs with many of the deciduous trees showing their best Autumn colours. It is also a large park with a good path following a circular route in and around the various displays.

The central lake looked a little empty with very little rain falling over the summer months leaving little for the ducks to splash around in.

Just as we saw at the Cowra Japanese Gardens yesterday, with a little irrigation, imagination and hard work it is possible to transform this barren landscape into something truly remarkable.

We would certainly recommend the OBG if you have a few hours to spare, want to kick some leaves around, need some exercise or just fancy a picnic with the family surrounded by specimen trees from around the world.