CORAL HULL: THE SECRET HORSES OF PETERBOROUGH
12. COBAR AND BYROCK, N.S.W. LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTION
welcome to the cobar and byrock shires,
incorporating wooded undulating country, with rugged hills and dry water courses,
the shire boundary is formed by the darling river in the north
and the lachland river in the south east,
much of the land used around the town district is for sheep grazing,
emus, echidnas, snakes, lizards, giant goannas, 200 species of bird,
including parrots, major mitchell cockatoos are common,
along with the eastern and western greys, the euro and the red kangaroo,
fork tailed kites, and wedgetail eagle feeding on rabbits, kangaroos or sheep,
in reservoirs and farm dams; heron, ibis, ducks, wanderers or even gulls and terns,
other common birds include honeyeaters, wrens, robins and the apostle bird,
a walk in the bush can reveal a suprising variety of wildlife,
one or two ranges of rocky hills dominate the landscape in the east,
flattening to sandy river plains in the west,
the water supply forms a 135 km pipeline to nyngan,
the floodplains are naturally treeless, saltbush and mitchell grass communities,
here, the banks of the rivers and minor creeks are lined by red river gums,
in the south and south east of the cobar shire, lie extensive areas of mallee vegetation,
most of the district is covered by semi arid woodlands,
some common trees are bimble box, red box, rosewood, behalh, and mulga,
vast expanses of wildflowers bloom in spring,
before european settlement the area had a park like appearance
with stretches of perennial native grasses scattered with trees and shrubs,
more than a century later much of it is dominated by shrubs,
such as turpentine, buddha, hopbush, punty and mulga,
they are known as densities and have been insidiously increasing,
creeping over the dune dominated lands, at the expense of pasture for livestock,
warning; the increase in density of these woody weeds
is the largest threat to sustainable pastoralism,
land holders are now using fire to reduce woody weed densities,
other methods being utilised are goat grazing, sage chemicals and clearing by
mechanical means, where there is predominately the grazing of livestock,
byrock, a small village 78 kms south east of bourke on the mitchell highway,
named after the renowned 'rock-hole', a natural gilgai formed in a table of granite rock
near the present site of the village, the old saying was 'meet you by the rock',
which gradually became 'bye-rock' then later byrock, or more recently 'bye bye byrock'
or 'bye bye outback' | |
This website is part of my personal testimony that has been guided by The Holy Spirit and written in Jesus' name. |
