We all woke up to a nice and sunny day today, and even better it was the first day of Spring! We all packed up into the car and headed.. somewhere.. Sara wouldn't tell us where... she did say she hasn't been able to properly take toyvoyagers up here for months because of how cold it's been and the road has been closed 2kms from the top because of snow fall... crazy! In August? Well here we are on the road...
...as you can see the road changes quite drastically from open fields to a whole bunch of trees, eucalyptus trees to be exact... you can't tell much from the view in the photos but a lot of what looks like farmland is actually vineyards... there are LOTS of vineyards surrounding Orange...
...and then all of a sudden the road turned into a dirt road... we all had to hang onto each other as we were bumping around so much...
...then we stopped... quite abruptly in the middle of the road... Sara spotted something and then we took a photo... you can't see it in the photo as the distance is quite far... but there was two white spots flying out of the middle of the road... what was it? We saw a cockatoo... a wild one, how crazy is that?
Welcome to Mount Canobolas! This is the highest point West of Sydney until the far side of the country in South Australia (on the Western Australia side)... on a clear day like this you can see pretty far... the height of the extinct volcano now is around 4,650 feet or 1,395 metres)...
...Then right in the centre of the peak there's a view point and there's a little map that shows the direction of each of the towns, so it shows where Orange is located, Parkes, Forbes, Blayney, Millthorpe, Bathurst and all the surrounding towns (Parks and Forbes is a bit farther so you can't see them really but it shows you what your looking at...) here I am checking out the map...
Here's some information about Mount Canobolas from the view point signs:
Mount Canobolas volcanic complex is listed in the Commonwealth Heritage Register for it's unique geological composition and location. These factors have resulted in a distinctive vegetation pattern, containing rare and unique species, which in turn contain habitats for a number of equally unique animals.
Within a 30 kilometre radius of Mount Canobolas, approximately 30 vents are known to have erupted. These eruptions commenced about 50 million years ago and halted approximately 10-15 million years ago. The Mount Canobolas vents erupted over that entire period, while others within the 30 kilometre radius were active for shorter periods. The basalt capping has largely weathered away, producing fertile soils as far away as West Wyalong (which is 223kms away).
On the way back down the other side of the view point we looked out into the direction of the city of Orange... it shows you how far up we really are... there are a lot of bush walks in this area... it's pretty amazing the wildlife in this area as well. Sara said she's seen kangaroos jumping through the bush on one of the bush walks they took last Autumn...
After spending quite a while at the peak we decided to drive back down... but there was one more stop to do before we were off to lunch... we stopped half way down and had a look back up towards the peak, and the opposite direction towards the city... as you can see were still quite high up...
The smaller peak next to the "flat top" of Mount Canobolas Sara said she believes is called "Little Canobolas" and is one of the main vents next to the main vent that was where we were standing... as you can see because its' the highest point they used that to their advantage and put radio and TV towers up there... sadly it's a bit of an eye sore...
Well... onto our next stop... it won't be long until were there now...
