A Sabbath of Surprises

For Sabbath this week we decided that rather than go to church we would spend it exploring around the upper Murray region in New South Wales. The part of the upper Murray region which we chose to explore is about 100kms drive from where we live, and there were a few places we saw on the map that we thought would be worth a look.

So we left the flatlands where we live and headed east. Around where we live is a Canola growing area, and at this time of year the Canola is a brilliant yellow and stretches in all directions.

The first place we explored was the Woomargama National Park. A large park, with signs that say 4WD access, dry weather roads. Hmmm. I should have taken notice of that. We tried to find the North Lookout, but ended up turning back after getting about 10.5 kms from the bitumen. We estimated that it was around 12kms to the lookout. But we did find a place that had some great views. So we got out of the car and had a look around and could see over in the distance a chain of mountains and I reckon one of them might have been ‘The Rock’ – which was beleived to be an important Aboriginal site. So we headed back to the Bitumen and towards Jingellic. Where the dirt meets the bitumen we took another look at the map of the area at a picnic shelter, and we noticed a nest in the process of being built. And this bird was the builder.

I don’t know what sort of bird it is, but we watched it dart back and forth with things in it’s beak for a while, then continued on our way towards Jingellic. Between the Woomargama NP and Jingellic there is a place called Abrahams Bosom according to the maps we looked at. We are aware of another location in the same state with the same name – near Nowra about 2 hours drive south of Sydney. That Abrahams Bosom was easy to find, but the one we looked for today wasn’t as we arive at Jingellic without even a signpost or anything to indicate it. Oh well. There was a innovative water tank stand on the same stretch of road where the farmer had used an old gum tree trunk.

We had lunch at Jingellic, and then headed further east. And we came across this interesting rock formation.

Quite a few kms further on we found the Southern Cloud Memorial. It is a memorial to one of Australia’s earliest air disasters, and is perched on a high hill over looking the mountains where the aeroplane disappeared in the early 1930s. The country it crashed in is so inaccessible and remote that the wreckage wasn’t found until the late 1950s. It was a bit poignant looking out at such beautiful mountains and standing in a place marking a disaster in the same mountains which happened nearly a century ago. One of the snowy mountains on the right hand side of the photo below is Mt Kosciuszko, Australia’s highest mountain at 2,228 metres above sea level. It may not seem very high by most other continents standards, but Australia is the flatest continent on the earth!

But the highlight of the day was the Paddy River Falls. We stopped at the car park and opened the doors to get out of the car and we could hear a loud roar – obviously the water falls, but we have never heard a waterfall roar like that! Here are a few photos of parts of the waterfall…

And just to top it all off, God’s promise that there would never again be a flood over the whole earth.