Meetup #18 – Barrington Tops

This weekend saw the Sydney Photographer’s Meetup group heading waaay out of town for their first overnight photography expedition.
The location was Camp Cobark at Barrington Tops.
Sure, we could have done horse riding closer to Sydney, but there’s something about getting right out into the bush, away from the city lights, away from the traffic, away from the noise, and hanging out with awesome country folk like Alan Shultz (owner and operator of Camp Cobark) and Glenn and Chrissy (husband and wife who kept us company and cooked our meals).
I can’t say enough good things about the whole operation.
Alan takes horsemanship very seriously and won’t let anyone near one of his horses until they heard his safey drill.
The catering was fantastic, too. There’s something about food cooked over an open fire which just leaves ovens and microwaves for dead!
We arrived at the Camp Cobark base (location of the offices, bunkhouse and horse yards) around noon, heard Alan’s safety talk, then mounted up and headed off on a three hour ride around the hills and valleys surrounding Alan’s property. To say the views were amazing would be a gross understatement.
We arrived at the campsite around 5:00pm and started putting up tents, while Glenn unsaddled the horses and let them loose in a small paddock for the night.
Then, while Chrissy began preparing our dinner, we all wandered around taking photos… the hills, the camp, the Cobark River (which flowed past our campsite, about 50 metres away), the sunset).
Dinner consisted of bbq’d steaks, boiled veges, pasta salad, coleslaw… and a couple of bottles of red (of course)!
Once the sun had gone down, I happened to notice this amazing corona around the moon. It was huge. In order to give it some reference point in terms of size, I was able to grab a shot with the fence posts around the camp in the shot. I used my torch (flashlight) to ‘lightpaint’ the fence while the shot was exposing, which gave me a shot I’m quite happy with.
An interesting comment regarding the corona, Glenn mentioned that whenever they see those rings around the moon, it is a harbinger of BIG rain. And he reckons the last time he saw one this big was back in ’78 when they received 24 inches of water (that’s around 75cm) in just 22 hours!
The morning chorus of native birds woke us around 5:30. There was some fog hanging around across the valley, but the smell of bacon and eggs cooking over an open fire persuaded us to stay close to the camp and shoot from there, rather than to venture too far afield.
After breakky, we pulled the tents down, packed up our gear, saddled up and headed off an another 3 hour ride.
After the previous afternoon’s ride, where we had all ridden with DSLR’s around our necks, most of us were content to let the cameras go back to the base camp in the 4WD’s so we could ride unencumbered. I personally didn’t feel that I missed out on any photographic opportunities because of this, as I’d already shot a heap of stuff I was happy with. I think everyone else felt much the same way.
We got back to the base around 11:00, packed our cars and headed off home.
For anyone looking for some horse riding in an awesome country location with mind-boggling scenery, I couldn’t recommend Camp Cobark highly enough.
Thanks for everything, Alan!