A big driving day today, about 450km. We’re away by 8:30. We’re not far out of town and the land is just totally flat in every direction.
We finally get our 30min back as we cross back into east coast time zone. While it make senses, I can’t say I ever really knew Broken Hill was on SA time.
There is a south easterly wind, and after what seems like a good start, I can see the fuel economy dropping badly. If it keeps this up it might be the worst we’ve had on tar.
We stop at Wilcannia for some lunch, being Sunday, nothing really is open, worse is there is not much that looks to be still operating. We make a sandwich and have it in a park by the Darling River. Although, like most rivers out here, it’s not flowing and there are only a few water holes along the section that we can see. I take a walk down to the river bed for some photos.
All along the side of the road here are goats, we must have seen hundreds of them. At least unlike sheep and roos, they have the good sense to either stay put or walk away, not towards the car.
Justine is driving and we are catching up to a slow moving truck, too slow to stay behind in this case. The roads are pretty straight, but a little narrow and with the heat haze on the horizon it not easy to see if the coast is clear. We eventually get our shot get around. The wind buffeting when we reach the trucks bow wave is not too bad and we are past. Justine had done about 1/3 of the driving on the trip, and given our (low) speed we haven’t had to do a lot of overtaking – this was the first for months for her – she said she literally clenched her teeth the whole way past. There is a Road train a little further up the road, but fortunately he pulls over not long after we catch up with him.
Justine is coming to the end of her stint, and we look for a rest area up ahead to pull over and swap drivers. We find a spot about 20km up the road. In the meantime a different road train has caught up with us. Justine gets on the CB to let the guy know we’ll be pulling over in what will now be 5km, to save him pushing for an overtaking manoeuvre. “No worries, thanks for letting me know” he replies, followed up with a “enjoy your lunch” as we pull in. I’m sure vans must frustrate the hell out of truckies, but being able to talk to them, they’ve all been nice and friendly.
Not far out of Cobar, I’m driving and I can see the road narrows to pass over a culvert, a huge Road train is coming the opposite way and we’ll meet at the culvert (of course). We normally pull over as far to the left as we can to keep the maximum distance between us and the oncoming roadtrain to help with the buffeting, in this case there will be lucky to be 2 feet gap (with a closing speed close to 200km/h). At the last moment I see what appears to be some goats feeding on the left side of the road near the culvert, at least they are not sheep. Oh crap, they are sheep. I grip the wheel even tighter, and wait for the stupid animal to jump out, needless to say it didn’t.
We pull into the only caravan park in Cobar. They are really taking advantage of no competition and being about halfway between Dubbo and Broken Hill. This will be one of the most expensive parks we’ve stayed in and they have no pool or playground, and only very basic facilities, not particularly clean either.
We unhitch and take a quick tour of the town, being Sunday afternoon, it is pretty much closed up. At the east end of the town there is a sign to the Fort Bourke Lookout, why not! It’s not just a lookout over the land, but into a working open pit mine, well it was an open pit mine, but now the opening to a underground mine.
While the van park does not have a swimming pool, Cobar does, and for some reason entry is free over the school holidays. We duck down there for a late afternoon cool down. They have a diving springboard into the main pool, Liam and Caitlin are in heaven jumping in.
After the yummy Pizzas Natasha made for us a week or so back, we’ve brought some ingredients, but it’s been too hot to cook them in the van oven, and most camp kitchens don’t have ovens either. After four months cooking about 90% of our meals on the weber, let’s try the pizza. We don’t have the actual Pizza stone, so I try in on the rack we have in the weber. It’s a little crispy, but yum. Four small pizzas are soon demolished.
