Recce Trip to Peak Hill
16th - 17th October 2004

Story Written by Bryce Messner

We all met at Orange (except Hugh) on time at 9.00am to what was developing into a crisp sunny weekend. We travelled overland to Manildra where we met up with Hugh Scott who came directly from West Wyalong.

We were heading for Goobang National Park a former State Forest where I used to shoot goats and pigs 20 or more years ago, and had some wild country around it. Well we found one of the entrances and entered this fantastic hardwood forest I of course hardly remembered. The park is situated about an hour from Orange near Peak Hill on a range of mountains reasonably undulating.

Mostly one major typical forest road runs through the northern part of the park, with many twisting narrow logging tracks now starting to grow over, like many former State Forests.

We drove for hours covering most of the park finding some challenging country indeed. In fact down one very dark and overgrown track that we had to turn back on, Jeff managed to sink his Xtreme to the axles in the quagmire of track we were on. As usual a quick snatch from the rear was all that was needed to extract the 2 ½ tons of Land Rover, Jeff's first.

We came upon the large camping area with new toilet facilities and stacks of wood was in easy reach, so decided it was time to set up camp. David’s portable DVD player filled some of afternoon in with 10 years of Camel Trophy for an hour or so in fact it was so good I bought the DVD. The rest of the night was excellent story telling, red wine & Boags to gets us through to the morning.

Sunday morning bright and early we all up ready to complete our exploration. We found some excellent rocky, slippery descents from the top of our plateau, in fact worthy of a TT in reverse, which we did not try on this occasion. We found a few creek crossings and a great lunch spot on a watercourse deep in the forest.

We then drove out of this section to try and find the entrance to the southern section. But after driving for miles surrounding the park we were unable to find its entrance. There is one and our next recce; probably a day trip in May will secure this entrance.

This will develop into a moderate trip in some nice scenic country (similar to Coolah Tops), a little challenging and will be suitable for newer members as a first experience off road. Keep your diary clean for October Long Weekend