Weddin Mountains National Park

Weddin Mountains National Park
Weddin Mountains from Eualdrie Road
Coordinates: 33 ° 58 ′ 20 ″  S , 148 ° 1 ′ 23 ″  E
Location:	New South Wales , Australia
Specialty:	Eucalyptus forest, old farm, robber's den
Next city:	Grenfell
Surface:	83.61 km²
Founding:	November 12, 1971

The Weddin Mountains National Park is a national park in the east of the Australian state of New South Wales , 291 km west of Sydney . The Weddin Mountains are a small, sickle-shaped mountain range that strikes roughly in a north-south direction, has steep, rocky breaks in the east and slowly runs out into the plain in the west. There you can still find a small patch of primary vegetation that has escaped cultivation because of its inaccessible location. Geologically, the area belongs to the Lachlan Fold .

The park was built by the aborigines of Wiradjuri inhabited for thousands of years and was later a den of robbers Busch. There is also a historic farm where a man and his wife made something useful out of every small piece of wire.

The area is now frequently overflown by commercial aircraft, as the main flight corridor from Sydney to Adelaide runs over these mountains.

Driveway

The Weddin Mountains National Park is best reached via Grenfell . If you drive west from there on the Mid-Western Highway , you will see signs for Holy Camp and Ben Halls Cave .

fauna

216 animal species have been observed in the Weddin Mountains National Park. Most of them are birds. There are also three species of wallaby living there , one of which is endangered, the Brush Tailed Rock Wallaby . The list of species includes honeyeater ( Painted Honeyeater ), the swift parrot , little Lori and the turquoise parrot . Cats, rabbits, foxes, goats and sheep can be found on imported animals.

Gangs of robbers

Ben Hall (1837–1865) a bushranger who, with his gang, plundered the area around Forbes and Grenfell in the 1850s , used the Weddin Mountains as a retreat. He lived in a cave in the northwest of what is now the park with his followers John Gilbert and Frank Gardiner . It is said that Ben Hall buried a treasure here that has not yet been found.

Seaton's Historic Farm

In the park you can visit Seaton's Historic Farm . It shows how a man and his wife made something useful out of every little piece of wire. Jim Seaton hand-built two miles of kangaroo-proof fence using posts from small trees that he found on site and that did not rot or be infested by insects. In the late 1920s the Seatons put their country on, and during the Great Depression , the farm has been established. Times and the country were tough, and you can see that in the buildings. The sheds have walls made of rolled corrugated iron (to make it longer). One of the sheds is full of old wire, tin, bottles and everything you can imagine. All the old machinery and equipment are still there where they were when the family sold the property to the government in 1980. The farm is a unique place where you can still see what poor farmers used to be like in the beginning and middle of the last century.

Ben Hall's Cave

Near Seaton's Historic Farm is Ben Halls Camping and Ben Halls Picnic Area . The picnic and barbecue facilities are large enough to allow the use of camping stoves, your own barbecue grills, and light a campfire. From there it is only a short walk to Ben Halls Cave .

Holy Camp

Holy Camp picnic and campsite

Holy Camp is 19 kilometers southwest of Grenfell. The coordinates are 33.897857 ° south and 148.002901 ° east. The last 3.8 kilometers of the access road are not paved. There is one of the entrances to the park with toilets, parking lot, picnic tables and fire pits. Camping is allowed. There is a small rainwater tank that is filled by the toilet's roof drain, but it cannot be trusted to be full. From here you can hike to Eualdrie Lookout and Peregrine Lookout . Around the parking lot you can see many wild animals, spotted monitor lizards and skinks by day and brushtail possums and cave doves by night.

hikes

View from Peregrine Lookout to the northeast over Holy Camp

The Eualdrie hiking trail leads 2.6 km (2½ hours there and back) from Holy Camp to Eualdrie Lookout via Peregrine Lookout (1½ hours there and back). The Peregrine Lookout is south of the parking lot and from there the path leads back north so that the Eualdrie Lookout is north of the parking lot. From there you can walk to Eualdrie Trig ( 750m high) and then down to Ben Halls Cave .

Web links

Commons : Weddin Mountains National Park  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

• Weddin Mountains National Park . Office of Environment & Heritage. NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
• Books about Weddin Mountains National Park
• A West Country Ballad (poem, English)
• Robbery Under Arms . World Wide School

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bush Islands . Open Road. NRMA
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Michael McFadyen: Western NSW National Parks Trip - Part 5 . Michael McFadyen's Scuba Diving Web Site
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Atlas of NSW Wildlife . NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ David Allenberg: Degree Project . Degree Confluence Project (2002)
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Weddin Mountains National Park . Office of Environment & Heritage. NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service