Orange is known as a colour city because of the wonderful Autumn colours, and I was so looking forward to seeing and photographing them. However, Autumn was a little late so we had to go looking for those hints of the colours to come.
Cook Park
With many attractions closed on Good Friday, I'd planned a day visiting parks and reserves.
We started with Cook Park then drove to Mount Canobolas and Lake Canobolas. We lunched at Borenore Karst Conservation Reserve, searched for Yuranigh's Aboriginal Grave Historic Site, before returning back to the apartment and walking around the nearby Ploughman's Lane Wetland.
Cook Park is a block of parkland, just outside the town centre, that (to me) is reminiscent of old-style parks with its rotunda, fountains, lawns, aviaries and duck ponds. Much of the original design is retained today.
‘Big Tree’ is a gigantic sequoia, closely related to the Redwoods in California. They can grow up to 80m high and Big Tree is one of the first trees planted in Cook Park.
We spent a lot of time in The Blowes Conservatory, a glasshouse donated in 1934 by Mayor Blowes for cultivating begonias. I remembered the small, easy-to-grow red and pink flowering plants that Mum used to grow and thought it a strange plant for a glasshouse, especially as Mum gave the plants to me to grow in the shade!
I was in for a surprise! I didn't realise how many different varieties of begonias there are. We both spent time photographing individual blooms and wide shots to show the variety of plants. It was a difficult job trying to choose which photos to keep.
With so many beautiful blooms, we couldn't resist posting them on Instagram:
There were signs that Autumn was on its way. Near the ceremonial gates there was a tree dressed in golden foliage.
The Avenue of Elm Trees is 60 years old, and is suppose to be covered in gold in Autumn. It looked like Autumn had come and gone for the elms.
I ended up popping outside the park and photographing the plane trees and pin oaks that lined the adjoining street.
We visited Cook Park on Good Friday, and it was a popular venue for the public holiday. We noticed backpackers had left their packs behind a bench on the verandah of the old caretakers cottage, so they could explore the park unencumbered.
However, we're not sure why someone would want to bring fluffy dice into the park.
Lake Canobolas
Lake Canobolas was built in 1917 as a water supply for Orange. It is fed by melting snow and waters of Molong Creek.
Autumn's presence was more evident here. A mix of native and exotic species of trees are planted at Lake Canobolas reserve and a blend of gold and red foliage lined the foreshore.
On the other side of the lake is the historic pump house, a shed containing the equipment used to pump water from Lake Canobolas to Orange. The pumps were powered by a gas engine; the gas created by burning coal, charcoal or coke.
Orange Botanic Gardens
In the search for Autumn, we spent another day at the Orange Botanic Gardens. The gardens were established in 1988 for the Australian Bicentenary. The gardens are divided into two main areas: one showcasing Australian native plants, the other exotic trees and shrubs.
There are many deciduous trees planted in the exotic section of the gardens, and many of the leaves were changing colour.
A heritage rose garden was established within the gardens in 1991. It wasn't the right season for roses but the rose hips were ripening!
Part of the land was a farm. The orchard contains varieties of apple, crabapples and pears.
There were two sundials in the gardens, a traditional sundial and an analemmatic sundial (a sundial of human involvement).
The analemmatic sundial was interesting and quite accurate. It comprised a ‘Figure 8’ mapping of the months in front of 12 stone markers for the hours.
Standing on the April point on the Figure 8 mapping, my shadow fell just past the ‘1’ indicating it was around one o'clock (which it was, it was 1:10pm).
The lookouts
We visited three lookouts in the area: Mount Canobolas, The Pinnacle Lookout, and Mount Lindsay.
Mount Canobolas is the highest mountain in the area and located about 13km from Orange.
The dominating feature on top of the mountain are the transmission towers. Unfortunately, the view wasn't clear.
The Pinnacle Lookout is a rocky outcrop outside of Orange reached via a steep, 30-minute walk. A lot of the tourist websites recommend watching the sunrise or sunset from the Pinnacle but I'm not sure I'd like to attempt the walk to the top in the dark.
As we were coming down I looked up at the lookout to see ... a guardian of the mountain or town?
Still searching for Autumn colour, I read a tourist brochure that detailed drives to view the Autumn leaves. The brochure recommended the view from Mount Lindsay Park.
From Mount Lindsay we could see across Orange towards Mount Canobolas and the view highlighted how green Orange still was.
Other posts and photos
Following are the other posts about our holiday in Orange:
... and from my From Deb's Kitchen website: Away from Home - Orange.
See also the following photos on our Instagram accounts:
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