Macquarie Marshes - Part 3 - A Geography Lesson

Before I show our time in the Macquarie Marshes I thought I would share why we wanted to see them so much. 

As I previously said, they are on the Macquarie River, quite near its end. 

The Macquarie River, named after Governor Lachlan Macquarie, starts just on the southern outskirts of Bathurst, where the Fish River and Campbell River meet.  The Aboriginal name for the Macquarie River is Wambuul.

The Fish River (so named by Surveyor John Evans when selecting the route for the first road across the Blue Mountains in 1814 because it had so many fish in it) runs from near Oberon.  Mick goes fishing in the Fish River Dam at Oberon.  The Campbells runs from the other side of Black Springs, also near Oberon.  Ben Chifley Dam, Bathurst’s water supply, is on the Campbells.  Mick grew up in the area near the Campbells’ headwaters, with the river flowing through his uncle’s property.  Fun fact, I caught my first ever fish, a brown trout, on the Campbells at his uncle’s.

This is the view of the river just down from where I grew up.  Yes, we were in the flood zone and our house was flooded not long before I was born.  This was my playground, swimming under the old wooden bridge and playing on the island that used to be in the middle of the river back then.  It was all quite wild and woolly back in the day, before the area was beautified as a bicentennial project in 1988.  There are now lovely park grounds and walkways which have made the area so much nicer.  

From Bathurst, the river flows towards Hill End, with the Turon joining it.  The Turon flows through Sofala and was rich in alluvial gold back in the gold rush days. 

I took this photo recently of the river about 20kms west of Bathurst.

Back in the late 1970s it was proposed to establish an army base in that area.  There was an almighty backlash against the idea and posters were printed showing pictures of the Macquarie River. It was stunning and so very different to Bathurst.  Fortunately, the base did not proceed and the river remained wild.  This is a blogpost I made a few years ago when we had a day out in the area.

Further downstream, near Wellington, the Cudgegong River joins the Macquarie and that is the site of Burrendong Dam, which is the water supply for a huge area for both town supplies as well as irrigation farming.  

As a result, the river is huge at Wellington compared to Bathurst, although still not large compared to coastal rivers. This photo isn’t good, but you get the drift.

The Bell joins the Macquarie at Wellington and the river remains large as it flows through Dubbo.

From Dubbo, it runs near Narromine and Trangie before heading to Warren, where it looks quite different.  

A much smaller, dirtier river, more reminiscent of our western rivers. 

From here it runs north for about 100kms to where it spreads over a wide area to create the Macquarie Marshes. These wetlands can be dry, but can also spread over a vast area in flood times. As the river is regulated by Burrendong Dam, an environmental flow is released in the spring to help with all the migratory birds that arrive for the breeding season. 

This is the river running through the marshes.  Such a small bridge, compared to some of the ones upstream.

We were always of the opinion that the river finished at the marshes, but that is not the case.  

Even when the marshes are mainly dry, the river usually continues to flow further north, travelling through the tiny village of Carinda and then finally joining the Barwon River near Brewarrina. 

This is at Carinda.

The Barwon flows west to join the Darling, which flows south to join the Murray on the Victorian border. The Murray then continues to flow south west to eventually reach the sea in South Australia. 

All this to say that a river that starts just south of here flows nearly all the way to Queensland before flowing all the way to South Australia. 

I hope this wasn’t too boring. Next, I’ll share what we saw at the marshes. It was worth visiting. 

Macquarie Marshes - Part 2 - Warren to Willie Retreat

The following day was also nice weather as we headed to Nevertire, just a short drive from Trangie.  A long train was being filled with wheat from the local silos.

This is just a tiny settlement, but features a painted water tower, which we have seen before.

From there, it is just 19kms to Warren.  You know you are in cotton country when you see a cotton gin with all the bails surrounding it.

Over the road from it there were paddocks ready for sowing the next crop, all nice and level with irrigation channels around the edges.

There was also quite a bit of machinery.

Our first road train for the trip.

Once we arrived in Warren we visited the Visitor Information Centre to grab some brochures.

Then it was time to have a wander up and down the street, followed by morning tea.  The local cafe does very good carrot cake, just saying. As always, I love checking out the old shop facades.

It’s a pity the patchwork shop is no longer trading.

It was fun to see some murals.

A feature this time were signs supporting Dusty.  Dusty is a 12 year old boy from Warren who walked 540kms from Warren to Canberra to raise funds for Little Wings and meet with the Prime Minister.  He actually met with him on the day we were in Warren.  He raised over $500,000 and the Prime Minister pledged to meet his funds raised dollar for dollar.  Little Wings is an organisation that flies isolated sick children and their families to medical appointments.  It is invaluable and their funding was due to run out.  It took a 12 year old boy to get to meet the Prime Minister, when no one else was able to achieve that.  Well done Dusty.

Back on the road, the water tower in Warren also has a mural painted on it.

To continue on our way we travelled north and the road soon changed from nice wide bitumen to a narrow strip.  Fortunately, there was room to get over if you met a vehicle.

Eventually, we came to our turn off.

What surprised us was the communications tower at the intersection.  It meant that we had really good internet connection at the camp site.  Not what we expected at all.

About 1km on the dirt road we came to Willie Retreat.

I love the letterbox featuring a Willie Wagtail.

We had opted for an unpowered site, so we could camp among the trees. It is a rather pretty spot.

We arrived in time for a late lunch and a relaxing afternoon, just sitting around.

There were about half a dozen campers that first night.

What we did notice was the huge number of little bush flies, enough to warrant wearing a fly veil.

The sunset was a nice way to end the day.

We were looking forward to the next couple of days exploring.

Macquarie Marshes - Part 1 - Home to Trangie

This is a little late, but better late than never…….

After our extended trip to Baradine, we cleaned the van and put it to bed until next year, as we wouldn’t get a chance to use it again for a while.

…….Then we started hearing on the radio how the Macquarie Marshes currently are receiving an environmental flow for the spring bird breeding season.  We are also hearing how the HN strain of the Bird Flu has reached Australian shores and they are worried about it reaching the Macquarie Marshes in the future.

The Macquarie Marshes is somewhere we have wanted to visit for many years.  It is either too wet, or too dry, or we have something else on, or we simply forget about it.  We reckoned this spring should be the time to visit……but when?  

We had appointments and commitments, and then there was the school holidays.  We figured out we wouldn’t be free until towards the end of October.  However, by then there may not be as much water and it could be stinking hot.  The other option was the next week, being the 14th to 19th September.  We did have things on, but they weren’t set in stone.  

What the heck, let’s do it.

We decided on the Thursday and left on the Monday, just a week after returning home from Baradine, the day after visiting the daffodils at Rydal.

The Marshes are located on the Macquarie River, funnily enough, and are located about 100kms north of Warren.  That is about due west from Coonamble. I wasn’t going to show much of our travels there, but things didn’t go quite as planned.  

We headed off, enjoying morning tea at Molong.  The plan was to take the shortcut from Molong to Yeoval, joining the Newell Highway at Tommingly and then cutting across to Narromine, avoiding Dubbo.  All went well until we arrived at Yeoval, Mick turned left at the crossroads and off we went…….until we both decided that we were on the wrong road. Of course, by then we had no mobile service, so couldn’t look at the map.  We figured we would just continue on our way to Parkes.  Eventually, we came to a stop/go light at some road works and there was a small glimmer of service, so we could check the map.  There was a tiny road heading north from that point that went over to the Newell Highway, saving us about 30kms from going into Parkes.  We popped out just near the Parkes Telescope.  

We really didn’t mind, as we got to travel a new to us road and the last section was really pretty on a very narrow strip of bitumen.  Fortunately, we didn’t meet any traffic.

We did see some nice crops.  Lunch was had at Peak Hill.  

The detour added about 60kms to our trip.

We arrived in Narromine in the early afternoon for a walk up and down the street.  There were some lovely blossom trees.

Our destination for that night was Trangie, in the little caravan park we have previously stayed in.  A firey sunset finished off a nice day.

Yay! A Finish

This should have been a really quick, easy project, but it ended up taking a little longer than expected. I have made this pattern before with no issues, so I don’t know what was going on this time.

Firstly, I couldn’t count my rows and my mock cables were a bit wonky.  Note to self, keep it simple when at a stitching day and you I am talking.  Who’d have thought.

Then, I dropped a heap of stitches, so decided to rip it back and start again.  That way, I could fix my previous boo boo.

All went fine, until I realised that the two 50g balls of wool would probably not be enough.  8 Ply wool isn’t all the same thickness these days and the Cleckheaton Country Naturals is more like an Aran weight and only has 96m to a ball.  Of course, I had bought the last two balls at the shop and there was no more in Bathurst.  Fortunately, I was able to get an extra ball at Spotty in Orange.  It didn’t matter in the least about the dye lot for this project.

I distinctly dislike using double pointed needles, as I never know how to comfortably hold then, but with much cursing, dropping stitches etc, I finally got it finished.  

It looked like I would run out of that second ball of wool with only a row or two to go.  However, look how much was left.  Of course, if I hadn’t bought the extra ball of wool I would definitely have run out.

Anyway, it is finished and I love it.  The fluffy pom pom suits it nicely.  Now, it is ready to keep my ears toasty warm on our next big adventure.

A Quick Trip To Sydney and Back

On Friday we had a quick trip to Sydney to collect a little trailer that Mick had bought to tow behind “Rosie”, his Suzuki Sierra.  The idea is that he can take his kayak out to the local dam to go fishing.

We left just after six in the morning and enjoyed the early morning light.

It was such a gorgeous day for a drive, with the wispy mist in the hollows.

As we neared Lithgow there were pockets of sparkly frost.  We were pleased to be nice and snug in the car and not camping on Mt Panorama for the car races.

I love this photo.  It was worth the drive just for the scenery, despite it being areas very familiar to us.

The day was the Friday before the Bathurst 1000 Race and we were expecting lots of traffic, especially through Lithgow.  You see, Mt Victoria Pass on the Great Western Highway has been closed since March, as the 1832 convict built causeway is falling down.  Funnily enough, it wasn’t designed to carry thousands of cars and large semi trailers each day.  Anyway, all the traffic that would normally drive around the outskirts of Lithgow has to drive through their town centre, with tight corners and then climb “Scenic Hill”, which is very steep and windy.  B Doubles cannot drive up there and they have two heavy duty tow truck stationed at the base of the hill to save trucks that get stuck.  

All the traffic has to go on the one road to Bell, where it divides to either take a smaller road back to the Highway, or the Bells Line of Road, which is narrower and doesn’t go through as many towns.  The speed limit has been reduced significantly.  Most of the traffic goes to the highway and there are frequent accidents as drivers get impatient. 

This red car was being impatient and you can see why there are accidents.  As you can see, the shoulders are very narrow, so the trucks don’t have a lot of room.

Anyway, after Bell, we took the Bells Line of Road and saw next to no traffic, which was somewhat surprising.

As it was such a gorgeous day, we stopped at the Kurrajong Heights Lookout to see the view to the east.  You can just see the Sydney city centre in the distance between the trees.

We made our way to the place to pick up the trailer and were back on the road heading home by 10.30am.  We expected to see a lot more traffic heading to the races on our return.

Lunch was had at a little cafe near Bilpin and then we continued back towards home.  Once again, there was next to no traffic.  We couldn’t believe it.

You can still see evidence of the terrible bush fires of late 2019, although the bush regenerates remarkably well.

The road was busy from Bell to Lithgow, but after that it continued to be a very quiet drive, quite the opposite of what we had expected.  This is looking down to Lithgow from the top of Scenic Hill.

We were back home by 3pm.  Not a bad effort.

So, here is the little trailer behind my car.  As you can see, it is tiny.  Although I have always had a towbar, this is the first time that anything has been towed.

And, behind Rosie the Suzuki Sierra.

As we all know, Mick likes nothing better than to tinker and have a project.  The trailer needs a tidy up and then to be set up to carry his kayak.  This is what it looks like now.  Yep, he’s pulled it completely apart to clean and repaint.  He will have a lovely time in his shed getting it ready to use.