Author Archive | Oliver Holmgren

14th June – Day 39: King Plains National Park to Grassy Creek, Gibralter Range National Park

Went for a walk this morning toward the big falls that are a few km down stream on the Kings Plains creek. The Kings Plains area was mined for sapphires in the 70’s interestingly enough. I decided to do a crystal study. In my early 20’s I recall going out crystal studying with a man by the name of Julian Hollis. He collects zircons and studies the level of damage in the crystal structure from their natural radioactive decay to enable an age sorting that is then geographically correlated to find where the old lava flows were and when they happened. Zircons are very pretty little crystals that most people don’t notice because they tend to be about a millimetre or so across and only a few mils long. They are highly radioactive. More so than uranium I believe.

So, I decided to have a look at the little crystal world in a place that was mined for sapphires.

Crystal study. I neglected to add a “geologists pick”. The largest of these is no more than 5mm across.

Ironbark and Xanthorrhoea on a rocky outcrop at Kings Plains

Xanthorrhoea detail

New Eucalypts that remind me I am not at home any more despite many familiar plants.

Here on the New England table lands we are high up. Kings Plains is about 900m . There are places over 1500m close by.

Headed to Glen Inis and on toward the edge of the plateau.

Boundary falls on the Gibralter range near the eastern edge of the New England plateau.

Boundary Falls, where to next?

Headed north up the range from Boundary falls to Grassy Creek where we have camped. There have been many creek crossings since Boundary falls and lots of very mushy slippery slopes. If we have to go back it will be tough going. If we come across hills as steep and slippery as we have descended that we must climb we will certainly have a challenge on our hands. I changed back to the 14 tooth counter sprocket (geared the bike down) this evening as there were a few time where I was trying to make another gear with the clutch. Raman’s gear box has 136% of the spread of mine so he isn’t needing to change sprockets. Well done Yamaha for spreading out the gear box!

We are both looking forward to tomorrows ride which will take us deep into the mountains on the Gibralter range.

We are at 990m here at Grassy Creek and its pretty cold despite how far north we are.

13th June – Day 38: Moree to Ironbark camp, King Plains National Park

We were both glad to leave the Moree hot springs caravan park this morning. There was a deeply unsettling energy to the place. Maybe it was all the unhealthy oldies in their caravans talking about watching tv and many other totally unfulfilling pastimes that they seemed to all delight in. Complaints about the trees in the caravan park too. One lady was lamenting the poor reception for the tv, another agreed “we are surrounded by damn trees. They should cut them down”. Another said they had two TVs in their caravan so she and he didn’t have to argue which show to watch, “we can both watch what we want”.

Perhaps deeply unsettling is an exaggeration but we were both glad to be on the road again.

More black top today, this time along the Gwydir Highway. Despite it being a major road we came across some stockman with a herd grazing the road.

Stockman grazing the Gwydir

Have I really left Victoria?

Camped at kings plains NP this evening, we have meet an oldie we can relate to a little more. He has decked out a small truck with his life and spends his days on the road. He avoids paid camping and caravan parks totally. He has a book of 3700 free camps sites in Australia. It’s a great road atlas too.

He’s alone and has been on the road for 18 months, travels at 80 like we do, keeps off the big roads where possible, explores places on foot and on two wheels as we do.

I can hear the stream and the wind in the ironbark. It’s cold under the stars here on the New England plateau at 900m but the wood in the fire is burning hot like the wood from home. In fact the wood looks awful like yellow box.

Kings Plains camp. Feels far more like home than I expected.,

June 12th: Day 37 – Moree

We left Warrumbungle before we perhaps would have with a large rain front promising significant rain. We planned to spend a day soaking up the hot springs at Moree and waiting for the rain to pass. The thunder storm hit in the arvo and brought heavy rain. Despite pitching our tents on high ground, before long we found our selves with water under and around the tents. The floor of the OnePlanet Goondie 2 30D is waterproof in theory but it does seem after a time with water lying under the tent to finally get wet inside if there is an pressure on the floor. Still happy with my tent despite this limitation that seem to come hand in hand with lightweight waterproof materials.

There was a reasonable camp kitchen which I spent a good portion of the day in working on images and the blog.

Bathed in the artesian hot springs again. Naturally hot but chlorinated unfortunately.

So many grey haired nomads. The place is wall to wall caravans.

Foreground; unpowered campers,
background; Grey haired sardines

June 11th: Day 36 – Warrumbungle NP to Moree

Got up early and headed up Split Rock.

I didn’t quite make it to the top before the sun crept over the horizon.

Watching a heard of goats begrudgingly give up their vantage point.

Looking south to the main Warrumbungle outcrops

Leaving this charred land before tomorrow’s rain arrives to wash away more of this eroding landscape.

I have put a few of the images of erosion into a gallery.

Moree is over 200km north making today the longest day on the blacktop yet. We plan to hold up during tomorrow’s weather at the hot springs in Moree that Rob1 from ADVrider suggested.

June 10th: Day 35 – Warrumbungle NP

Cooked breakfast in the rain this morning. Rain on your toast isn’t that great. The scramble eggs were good but yeah, the wet toast…

Rain pattering down on my tent. Waiting for the weather to ease.

The den

The One Planet Goonie 2 30D tent is working well. I have my sleeping mat and bag rolled up inside it. Thanks Sandy for that hint 🙂

I can pitch it in under 5 minutes including inflating the EXPED SYN MAT 7.5 and using the dry sack that my cloths go in when on the bike as a pillow. Very happy with this side of things. Plenty of room for one (its a two man tent in theory). It does work for two but for living in day-in day-out it is nice to have enough space to spread out, write, stretch, toss a lens into a corner, pile stuff in when its raining etc. Raman has his one as well. Its a little on the light weight side for my liking. We’ll see how durable it is over the long run. Very happy so far though.

Went for a ride in the avo after the rain cleared up.

Its a bit of a moonscape in places

A tower on the South-Eastern edge of the park on one of the peaks. The tower is enormous! The “little” tower to the left is a full size television repeater tower. The larger tower on the right is 155m according to my map. Not sure what it is used for.

Split Rock firing up on dusk again. Would love to climb it tomorrow before sun rise.

503 sec, F 4.0, ISO 3200

Spent an hour with the night sky this evening. It is definitely good here, the stars don’t twinkle much at all which I think is a sign that the atmosphere is more uniform in temperature variation. The main limitation in my astrophotography hasn’t been the skype though, rather my equipment. I decided to try a longer exposure this time.

I am such a perfectionist in my photography. I would usually avoid this type of image, lacking the sharpness and fidelity that I usually seek. However this “soft” image reveals some of the magical colour in our Milky Way galaxy. Amazingly the Siding Spring Observatory had mapped over 2 million galaxies some years ago. Two million. Thats not an estimate of how many are out there! Thats galaxies that have been counted and named. I feel small.

Seeing the point around which we are rotating is another curious thing revealed by these long exposure photographs.

June 9th: Day 34 – Coonabarabran to Warrumbungle NP

The neck and back are much better this morning after Raman clicked my back gently with my direction last night.

The Warrumbungle National Park has been burnt out recently. One can easily see the form of the land through the burnt trunks.

View South East from Siding Spring Observatory

Although this is sad in a way, it also has its beauty and certainly offers a unique opportunity to see the landscape naked. Understanding the hydrodynamics of a landscape is much easier when you can see its actual form. Speaking of Hydrodynamics, the erosion is pretty nasty! Coming in late I didn’t get many photographs but I would like to spend a bit of time hear, weather permitting. Its been a little sunny today but the clouds keep returning to threaten rain.

Coonabarabran is the self proclaimed “Australian Capital of Astronomy”. There are little domes housing telescopes everywhere and only a little way into the Warrumbungle NP there is a huge dome, visible for more than 15km away. The Siding Spring Observatory is enormous and the telescopes and facilities housed within are impressive to say the least.

Thanks for the recommendation Mairwen!

The main observatory dome at Siding Spring.

260 tons of telescope! The biggest in the southern hemisphere. What a place.

Volcanic plug, from about 17 million years ago, that are more resistant to erosion than the surrounding landscape

An alternate route down from Siding Spring Observatory brought us to another serious bit of equipment

The clunking noise on my bike at low speed under acceleration got worse today and again I looked at the cosh drive but this time I am pretty certain that this is the cause. The chain was very loose too and I had only tightened it recently. Pulled the back wheel out this evening and found the rubbers to be in better condition than I expected.

Inspecting the coshdrive

Never the less they need replacing asap. I will try to order them tomorrow if I can. I activated my telstra pre-paid data SIM this morning to update the blog. There was a telstra tower in Bylong but it must have been one of the ones that I am not allowed to access on Kogan. Kogan “use part of the telstra 3G network”. Kogan only has access to 97% of Australia’s population, just the same as the Optus network claims. The full Telstra network offers 99.5% coverage of the population. Not a lot more as a percentage but as area I believe it is a lot more. Anyway, I was only getting 4kb/s upload in Coonabarabran with almost full bars so I decided to activate the Telstra SIM. I got a message saying it would be ready within 4 hours. It’s still not work this evening and once again we are in an area where Kogan is not covered.

I will have to ride out tomorrow to make a called on Kogan to get the Telstra one working so I can order the parts. Frustrating.

Split Rock from our camp illuminated by the setting sun.

June 8th: Day 33 – Bylong to Coonabarabran

Definitely something militaristic about this one

Rode east to the Goulburn River along the valley from Bylong. Impressive mountain ranges either side but definitely nothing compared to the Newnes Valley. Apparently the Bylong valley is full of coal and the mining companies have been buying up the land and leasing it back to the farmers. One mining company has one chunk that is now 30,000 hectares. Headed for the Warrumbungle National Park, we did some road miles today.

So its a long weekend, apparently. Riding through Merriwa we found the main street closed and throngs of people coming and going from their “Day of the Golden Fleece”.

Afternoon light on the rolling hills above Coolah

The end of the day is a lovely time that I seldom spend on the road as it means riding when there are roos around, setting up camp in the dark and in this case riding on into the night. Photographically a wonderful time of day though

I was thoroughly buggered by the time we got dinner on this evening. Last nights events weigh heavily on my mind. My back went out in my sleep last night and I am getting some really strange and uncomfortable sensations whenever I turn my neck. Time for a good long rest.

June 7th: Day 32 – Having a blast in Bylong

It rained very heavily last night and early this morning. Although the tents are “water proof” things inevitably get wet so having a dry place to pitch the tent in the down poor was great . We decided to wait for the weather to pass.

I enjoyed working on my images for the day and preparing things for the blog. There is no hurry. We have no where to be…

A quaint little church across from camp – Bylong

Both Raman and I really liked the Bylong Valley. There’s something nice about it. Pity its going to be one big open cut coal mine.

Early in the even some locals turned up for a chat around a fire. The gather here every Friday apparently.  Later in the evening we went over and had a chat.

One of the guys had been to Cape York last year and was raving about the fishing. He strongly recommended gold lures for Barra… and green lures for a bunch of other fish. Ended up talking about lots of redneck things including bikes and guns. Ah deary me. Anyway, one thing led to another and ended up being a real blast with the locals! Can’t be more specific than that! Perhaps you’ll hear the full story around a camp fire one day…

June 6th: Day 31 – Newnes to Bylong

Slept late this morning after all the hiking.

Headed off down the valley again with the towering cliffs on either side. Once out of the valley we hooked back around onto a track to ran along the top of the cliffs.

With the cliffs to the right and an area that signs informed us was dangerous to enter due to mine subsidence, we pushed on until we came to a short steep section of track descending into a valley filled with ferns with high cliffs on either side. The descent looked to be a one way trip.

Raman very nearly end for ended his bike going down the steep and badly stepped section of track. It really shook him up and he took it easy for the rest of the day. I went down the opposite side of the track and had better luck.

Crown Creek track is closed to motorcycles so we headed back out to Ben Bullen.

I really enjoyed these tracks and the riding out to Ben Bullen. Great tracks.

North to Rylstone. The caravan park in Rylstone leaves a lot to be desired! We opted to continue to Bylong which we had heard good things about from fellow adventure riders and indeed it is a lot better than the bloody Rylstone caravan park…and its free. Wow! Showers, toilets, undercover, power and a great big field to camp in.

Taking cover at Bylong from the coming rain.

The lady in the one and only shop here, the general store, is really nice. They have had the store for 15 years now.

Cooking up a great meal with both stoves at once. Sauce simmering on the right and boiling a 2L pot on the left. Both can be fed with the pot still in place

Top view showing the fuel

Top view showing the secondary air vents producing clean combustion. When fired up, these little stoves go really well. Burning tiny amounts of wood or any combustible material really. At less than 300g they are light for travel too. A great alternative to the Trangia or gas stove.

June 5th: Day 30 – Newnes

Easterly Newnes escarpment from camp

Last night’s hike left me keen to return to the cliffs in day light and perhaps find a way up. Once at the base of the cliffs once again, we skirted along looking for a way up. Having left the tripod behind this time, I was ready when Raman found an entry to a sort of shaft running up the cliff face that required a bit of climbing.

The opening

Inside the shaft

The stone bridge.

The rewards as we climbed were thrilling.

Raman out over the cliff. A drop that even scared the hell out of Raman. “Don’t look down… OH…oh…oh… shouldn’t have looked down. I’m just going to slowly shimmy back now”

There were several more challenging sections of climbing and skirting along cliff faces looking for holes in the otherwise impenetrable walls before we finally reached the top of the main escarpment. After nearly 2 hours we reached a protruding section of rock at about 860m that gave the view.

Watching the occasional person at the camp site below was like watching ants. I checked the angle and found that our tents in the camp ground were at about 28-30 degrees decline from our vantage point and 345m below us.

The cliffs I skirted along last night.

The landscape above the cliffs

What a vantage point!

When we did finally leave the vantage point we scrambled down quickly.

Down the shaft. Yes, its steep!

Once past the precipitous cliff edges we slid, scrambled and jumped our way back to camp in less than 50 minutes. With a bit of time before dark, we quickly pulled all the gear off the bikes and headed off for a ride. Crossing the Wolgan River looked easier than it was. The bottom was sandy and we sank into it. We got through but it did catch us by surprise a little. The main challenge on other crossings has been the slippery rocks on the bottom so we were rather relaxed when we saw a smooth bottomed river.

As it turned out we didn’t have far to ride on the eastern bank of the Wolgan as the road was blocked. The Newnes industrial ruins were in walking distance an we took the opportunity.

Newnes Industrial ruins. The photographer in action.

Coke ovens from about 1910. The bricks used are tapered. Very nicely built.

One of the few almost intact ovens and the ever present cliffs towering above

I was really starting to feel my legs. I am loving the hard climbing but it does wear you out after a bit. I can see my fitness improving significantly. Still, stomping around the ruins in my full armour became heavy work.

Newnes Shale Oil facility, 1922

Oil washing tanks.

Paraffin processing facility

A curious round building. Not sure what the purpose of this one was.

There is an old railway from Newnes to Lithgow that runs through several tunnels. I wonder if we could ride all the way out to Lithgow through the cuttings, over the embankments and through the tunnels?