A Bloody Big Country

Coming out of Broken Hill it's desert scrub country. As I drive through it I am eternally grateful for the motor car. It seems that you just drive and drive and drive and I can't help but think of people like Edward and others who made their way across it on foot, horseback, by camel or bullock train. Not only were they faced with slowly trekking mile after mile but they did so without the insulation a car gives you from weather extremes, insects and dust.

Somewhere along the road from Broken Hill to Cobar, I can't remember where, a local installation artist or artists has constructed a TV tree, a hard hat tree, a bra tree, a barbie doll tree and several other trees festooned with such objects. For several kilometres it breaks the monotony. Thanks guys.

Wilcannia lives up to it's reputation as one of the sad towns of outback NSW. It's sandstone public buildings speak of better days when it was at one point the 3rd largest port on tonnages shipped in Australia. Now everything that isn't closed and abandoned, has barred and shuttered windows and there is an air of lethargy about the whole town. The only sign of life was the local Indigenous Radio Station which was blasting out country music to the main street. Out front were two smiling local trannies and despite it being a radio station I don't mean old fashioned portable radios.

I called into the Police Station to check if the road up the Darling to Bourke was sealed. The Station, in one of those fine old sandstone buildings, has a formidable modern steel mesh door and I got the impression it was not designed so much to keep prisoners in, as to keep seriously disgruntled clients out. In the station I asked a receptionist about the road and she had just responded in the negative when a policeman popped his head out of a back office. He looked and sounded like a bogan who had decided to steal a police uniform and wear it as a dare but as he was inside an actual police station I assumed he was an actual policeman.

"Whadda yeh drivin", he asked. I replied that it was a Suzuki Vitara which would be fine but I was more worried about what I was towing which didn't have much clearance and isn't really designed for off road. "We went up to Tilpa this mornin'. Sat on 110 most of the way with no probs." I was thinking "yeah in a top of the range Landcruiser that you don't pay the maintainence on" but I refrained from saying it. The receptionist helpfully pointed out that was only half way and it might be worse further up.

"Much corrugations", I asked. "A bit. But if yeh hug the west side of the road yer pretty right." Now I'm not averse to using the technique of driving on the wrong side of isolated dirt roads if the surface is better but I was surprised to hear a policeman advocate it to a member of the public. I got the distinct impression he was challenging me, the presumed city slicker, to man up and get off the seal for a while. I guess Constable Bogan skipped class the day the Police Academy covered "Promoting Road Safety to Members of the Public". Anyway I thanked them for their help and decided to take the sealed road to Cobar and thus to Bourke.

Cobar's Great Western Hotel with what  they proudly assert is the longest stretch of cast iron lace in the Southern Hemisphere.

As we procededed east the vegetation got higher and turned from desert to Mulga scrub. I think I mentioned goats previously and there are millions out there. They keep the scrub neatly pruned so you can see blue horizon both below and above the trees. Apparently they are sort of feral, sort of owned and they do get trapped and sold for a good price.

Gundabooka National Park just south of  Bourke.

We camped a night at the Meadow Glen Rest Area and then went from Cobar, a copper mining town, up through Gundabooka National Park where we camped on the banks of the Darling River. We did end up doing nearly 100kms of dirt road through the park and the Suzi and Avan both acquitted themselves well. Despite some significant corrugations nothing came apart except 2 eggs in a carton in the fridge and virtually no dust got inside. It was worth it because the Park has some fine Original Australian artworks and a nice campsite.

Matilda views what she declares is some fine rock art.