Turon River Camp

Originally Published on March 11, 2024

 We now find ourselves in Sydney, back from the Blue Mountains. In the last couple of days, we have explored more backroads, or tracks as they're called, found a nice campsite along a stream, visited a vineyard, and had several animal encounters, all of which were positive (more on that in a bit). 

We stumbled upon the Dry Ridge Estates vineyard the day before when we were (unsuccessfully) searching for a decent place to camp for the night--some of the "camp grounds" are just parking lots near the road. Thinking it would be impolite to set camp in their well manicured vineyards, we decided to return the next day, and surrendered to the fact that we needed to find a hotel. 

After enjoying a coffee in the historic, still-structurally-sound Carrington Hotel lounge in Katoomba, we set out for the Dry Ridge Estates vineyard to do a wine tasting. The vineyard overlooks rolling pasture with horses and alpacas, and sits in the bottom of a valley surrounded by enormous sandstone cliffs. The wines they produced were all on the dryer end of the spectrum. Surprisingly, the Riesling was our favorite. 

Note about the sandstone mountains: when we are up at the higher elevations on the 4x4 tracks, the roads are sometimes sand, which is of course counter intuitive. The ocean floor was forced up and eventually inverted causing this phenomenon. Interestingly, the sand from the Blue Mountains is what eventually washes down and forms the fine soft sand beaches of Sydney all the way North as far as Gold Coast. 

After, we drove to the Turon River to set a camp, which is, of course, next to Turondale, just South of Mudgee, but right above Wyagdon in the center of Wattle Flat, not far from Dubbo-- and these are the most "normal" sounding names of the towns in the region. 

After a couple of small stream crossings and traversing some gravel banks, we found a grassy spot alongside the Turon River, away from any other campers and whatever the Australian version of "yahoos" are. Really, the sign for us to stop at this spot was the friendly 'roo waiting to greet us as we pulled up. He (she?) hung around, curious, as we set camp. 

We went on a quick walk up the adjacent hillside for some exercise and then prepared a meal of cucumber feta salad and some spicy meatballs before bed.

The next morning, we found another friend in our campsite: a large red-bellied black snake. They're common in the area, and like to be near streams, so maybe we were the ones intruding on its campsite...

Regardless, it was a positive encounter because no one died, or even got bit. It is worth mentioning that there are no recorded deaths from a red-bellied black snake, just "a lasting, excruciating pain." Nice. 

This is a rock wallaby found near the cave entrance from the other day. Cute fella!