2010/11 Australia trip - Cocoparra |
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Wednesday November 3rd
We had another cold night but the morning warmed up without the wind, so perhaps the Warrumbungles were going to have a warm day, but we had to be moving on. We had a straight blast down the Newell Highway to Dubbo and Parkes and West Wyalong, repeating our trip out five weeks earlier. We noted that the southern section of Goobang park was still closed because of high water or perhaps it was a new closure because of recent rain.
This time we were planning on staying at Cocoparra national park, so we took the Mid Western Highway west towards Hay. Things changed in a hurry. Suddenly we were in the land of outback flies, the kind that just hunt down every piece of moisture on your face: mouth, eyes, nose. No biting involved but they are always right there with you. We’d expected to 
encounter these on Cape York so I suppose we should be grateful to only get them at the end of our trip.
The other problem was that we were entering a fruit fly exclusion zone earlier than we’d expected, which meant that we had get rid of all fruit and peppers or risk a fine of thousands. We ate all the fruit we’d just bought in 
Dubbo and dumped our peppers.
The road into Cocoparra was lined with flowers, great masses of Patterson’s curse, edged with these gold and red flowers. They looked to be some form of African daisy, and probably not native to Australia.
Cocoparra is a range of low sandstone hills, nowhere near as spectacular as the last few parks, but pretty with its rocky outcrops and abundant flowers. The Woolshed Flats 
campground is considered too remote a spot for anyone to collect fees so we had free camping.
We took a walk looking for birds, like this ringneck parrot and we also spotted some dingoes in the distance, but clouds of mozzies assaulted us as the sun went down.
Thursday November 4th
I took a quick morning walkabout before we left. The day started sunny so I was just battling the flies, but as the clouds rolled in so did the hordes of mosquitoes again. Even if we didn’t have to get 
back to Melbourne I don’t think we’d have stayed in the park very long. Mosquitoes don’t bother me very much but when they start elbowing each other to make room it’s time to leave!