Wondering in The Warrumbungles



'The Bread Knife' Warrumbungles



Sun 9^th – Tues 10^th May 2011

Dill Marley Matty Ben & Lizzie about to start
our walk up 'The Bread Knife'

The Warrumbungles….oh how we love ya! Volcanoes erupted many many years ago and left a whole lot of mountains behind. And they call them The Warrumbungles and that’s where we are. High up in the mountains (not as high as Coolah Tops mind you and we gauge this by the size of fire needed to keep us warm and the amount of clothing you need to wear to bed). We are still experiencing single figure temps overnight, and this morning we awoke to a bucket of water having a nice ½ inch layer of ICE on the top. No way! Yes Way! No wonder Benny woke up in the middle of the night and asked why he couldn’t feel his toes. Bit chilly. I do believe that all over the state is experience cold weather too, so we are not alone.

Quite a civilized National Park, providing, us with HOT bore water showers. When no matter how much soap you use in the shower you come out clean as a whistle but with that distinct whiff of bore water on your skin. But hey who is complaining? Not this dirty duck. It was still a challenge to get Benny and Matty to pop up the shower block and run around to get wet. Who needs to waste precious time having a shower when there is so much dirt and dust to play in around the campsite? Whilst I am on the subject of dirt. Can someone please tell Linda Evans …a thousand Thank You’s. Linda’s wonderful advice was for us to pack a couple of trucks and cars and shovels for the kids to play in the dirt and they would be happy. And happy the kids are!  We pull up to a campsite and Geoff and I assess the grounds for camper trailer suitability and the kids get out and check if there is a spot to make a road and quarry and parking area for their trucks and cars. Who would have known?



Geoff and Lizzie on top of the world



We were blessed with the company of our dear friend Dill, who came over to meet us from Brewarrina to stay with us for a couple of days. We haven’t seen Dill for a while so it was great to catch up with him and also to see a familiar face. Mind you we’ve only been on the road for just over a week, imagine what we’ll be like after four months of not meeting up with anyone we know?

The Warrumbungles is renowned for its walks. And walk we did!!!!! We took in a few small walks on the Monday, just a taster of what was to come…. Back pack full of lunch and some water and off we set, our mission – to walk to ‘The Bread Knife’, the Bread Knife is an amazing skinny rock jutting out the side of a mountain. It was about a 5 ½ km walk to the top, it was absolutely breathtaking, we were virtually the only people on the mountain side, in what seemed like the middle of no where standing at the base of an unbelievable rock formation. It took us about 6 hours to complete and in total we walked about 11 km. (including nearly 200 stairs). I suppose it has to be seen to be believed and whilst we were on top the mountain feeling like the only people on the planet we were also so proud of ourselves and especially the kids because they walked the whole way! Did the kids enjoy the experience and find it as inspiring as Geoff, Dill and myself I hear you ask? Ummm lets just say that when they sift through the photo’s in about 10 years time they may remember the Quad burning walk and say to themselves…’yep that was worth every step’. Geoff and I had planned to take the family on ‘The Walk of 1000 stairs’ the very next day but the enthusiasm level of our tour party was quite low, so we gave it a miss. But mark my words, one day we will return to conquer the 1000 step walk.

We camped not far from another family from SA who have been on the road for a month and had 3 little people with them. It’s the first lot of kids we’ve come across so our little people were more than happy to have a bit of social interaction with people their own height.

Lot’s of Kangaroos in the Warrumbungles and during the night we were visited by the biggest foxes you have ever seen! Holy Dooly they were cunning too, taking a bit of convincing to shoo away from our campsite.

With maps spread over the camp table trying to plot our next destination and thawing out our bits from the below zero temps overnight – we thinks it’s time to bid central NSW farewell and head North to warmer weather. We are going to do a couple of big days on the road and a few overnight stops to get up North perhaps somewhere near McKay to catch some ‘Red Claw’

As the song goes…we’re on the road again………….

The Bread Knife is the 3rd rock from the right
in this pic, 11km walk we climbed the rock on
the far right..unbelievable