Continuing our Exploration – Mount Kaputar

I’m finally back to share the last day of our long weekend away…… you can’t rush these things.

On the Monday we had a fairly early start, as we had a big day planned.  Our first aim was to go to the top of Mt Kaputar, about 50kms east of Narrabri.  Reportedly, on a clear day, you can see 10% of the state of New South Wales.  We were very lucky, in that it was a nice, fine morning and quite warm.

We had heard that the road was twisty and not suitable for caravans, but still good for normal cars.

That’s where we were heading.

Yep, the road was narrow and twisty.  It was tar, then dirt for a while, but once we climbed further it reverted to tar.  Only the last little bit was then dirt.  Better than we had expected.  Friends had ridden up on a normal road bike a few years ago.  I’m glad we were in the ute.  The gravel would have been a bit interesting as a pillion on a bike.

Our first scenic stop was the Doug Sky Lookout.  He was the engineer that supervised the road building.  I salute him. 

We were in for a shock when we hopped out of the warm ute cab.  It was freezing and with a stiff breeze.  Thank goodness I had thrown coats and hats in before we left home.

The view was spectacular.  This is looking towards Coonabarabran and the Liverpool Plains.  You can even see Mullally Hill.  I never knew it was called that.  We had always known it by that name as it is this one quite prominant hill at Mullally, in the middle of the vast plains.  It is our beacon to turn left toward home. I digress…..as I do.

Here is the scenery a bit closer. We had noticed the change in vegetation as we had climbed up from the plains below.

We were lucky, that while we were parked at the lookout a couple of cars came down the road and one went up.  We were glad we hadn’t met them on one of the narrow bends.

Finally, after quite a bit more twisting and turning we reached the summit.  What perfect weather for our visit.

Wow!  Look at that!

Once again we were very rugged up and my new hat had its first outing.  The flora up here is alpine more than anything, which can be expected, as the summit has an altitude of 1510 metres.  That’s higher than anywhere around home, with Black Springs being about the highest at 1200 metres.  No wonder we were cold.

You can’t escape technology.  Then again, we expect good mobile phone coverage.  There has to be towers to meet our expectations.

This family wasn’t at all phased by our presence.  They were quite happy to have their photo taken.  Me thinks they are rather used to us tourists.

I noticed quite a few trees with hollow bases like this one.  There was some evidence of bushfires in the past, but fortunately, there don’t appear to have been any recently.  Touch wood. (No pun intended.)

As we were driving down the mountain, you could get a good look at the rock outcrops. 

When you zoom in you can just see grass trees growing on the top. I bet these outcrops are popular with climbers.

I think it would be stunning driving through this area during wattle season.  There is already early buds forming.

This is the squarish outcrop that you can see in the silhouette of the mountains from miles away.

And then, before we knew it we were back on flat ground on the plains.

Mt Kaputar is somewhere we have wanted to visit for many years, so we are really pleased we made the effort on this weekend to finally get there. It certainly was a weekend of exploration.

By now time was slipping away so it was time to head home.