Sydney.
Like so many others, a big, crowded, smelly city.
Were it not for the harbour, you could be in Melbourne.
It does however offer services not available in the bush.
Sushi, yum cha, and endless other culinary choices.
Time for a few running repairs, a set of tyres, another battery, and a full underbody clean.
Dentist, doctor, chiro, and of course a few friends.
Our dear friend Eileen passed away while we were in Sydney. No more will her smiling face greet us at the end of the track to Nacooma. No more sitting on the porch discussing the comings and goings at the bird bath, morning games of scrabble, or home made jams. No more emails advising us of the endless spelling and grammatical mistakes in this website. (New proof readers welcome.)
The wake was one Eileen would have been proud of. The entire village was there, and people came from all over Australia to celebrate her life. The funeral procession stretched from one end of the village to the other. As Chris so eloquently put it, we have lost an important tribal elder. We will all miss her terribly.
After a couple of small jobs on the way, we made our way to our favourite plains town, Gulargambone. To the east, the Warrumbungle Mountains rise abruptly from the plains, with Siding Springs Observatory nestled atop one of the lesser peaks. A rising full moon completes the spectacular picture (and hides the parched earth).
Having been here so many times before, we know most of our customers. We are also quite familiar with the bird life, and can spot the blue bonnets, grass parrots, and cockatiels as we traverse the back roads visiting farms. On this visit, we spotted a tawny frogmouth owl, a first sighting for us in this area. In addition to the usual range of problems, our work in the area also included setting up an electronic weather station and working with a GPS guided tractor.
Just when we had completed all our work in the area, an email from Jo and Ted enticed us to delay.
We hooked up with them to explore Warrumbungle National Park, and make plans for our imminent trip up the cape.
In an effort to avoid our annual hassles with the NSW RTA, we reregistered the cruiser (three months in advance) at Nyngan, the last office in the north west.
Heading out this way, we could hardly pass up a visit to Bourke. As always, Chris and Kristie made us very welcome at the Gidgee Guest House. The improvements there continue, with the heritage restoration of the Old London Bank almost complete. It is harvest season for limes, so we departed with a "lime care pack" (fresh lime cordial, lime butter, and of course, some Gidgee Lime Pickles). At least we'll be safe from scurvy as we trek into the desert.
Our last stop before leaving NSW is a visit to Chris and the crew at Wapweelah. Aside from giving him a few tips about building a website, we indulged in the luxury of an open air hot bore bath. The further west we go, the more obvious the extreme drought conditions become. Some farmers may not plant this year, and stations are destocking due to the vanishing feed. The Macquarie Marshes are too dry to kayak, and there is little ground cover anywhere.
Desert Kayaking
Crossing the border at Hungerford, we set up camp in Currawinya National Park.
The ranger dutifully explained that the lakes in the park are only dry about once every forty years, so we are really quite lucky to see them dry.
The vast number of empty carapaces lying upturned on the dry lakebed suggests that the turtles aren't quite so happy about our luck.
Despite dry times elsewhere, there has been rain in central Queensland, runoff spilling over into the creeks of the channel country.
Taking the kayaks off for the first time in a while, we explored a short stretch of the Paroo River.
As we've mentioned elsewhere, we prefer to keep the cooking simple.
Chris was generous to a fault, and insisted that we take a leg of mutton with us.
Our cooking equipment does not include an oven of any kind.
We baked it on the banks of the Paroo, wrapped in foil and buried in coals along with a few vegies.
While it was a great meal, it's a lot of work to make it happen.
At least now we've done it once.
We stopped long enough in Eulo for Helen to indulge in some local date wine and a mud bath, before continuing on to Lake Bindegolly National Park. Despite being another dry lake, there were still a dryland birds in evidence, mulga parrots and the first cuckoo we've seen in a while. At Thargomindah we sought out local advice about river conditions. Multiple channels, limited flow, and overgrowth of some stretches by lignum make one way trips unpredictable. We accompanied one of the locals clearing his yabbie pots from several of the channels of the Bulloo River, and spotted a lone brolga while kayaking other channels of the river. Even with further local advice, an attempted one way passage on the Wilson River was thwarted by overgrowth.
As we head further west, the land becomes drier and more desert like. Gibber plains stretch for miles, interrupted only by the occasional sand dune. At night, you can hear the dingos howling. Approaching the South Australian border, we stopped at The Dig Tree, a coolibah on the banks of the Bullah Bullah water hole. This is the focal point of Bourke and Wills fatal exploration of Australia. Bourke was the wrong man to lead such an expedition, and multiple mistakes lead to his (and others) premature death. It's called the "dig" tree, because inscribed on it was "dig 30 feet NE", which indicated the presence of buried supplies. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like to slowly starve to death, knowing you'd missed rescue by a mere 9 hours. His efforts are an appropriate icon of Australia - the blind and ignorant failing to recognise or understand what they had come to claim.
Crossing into South Australia, we camped a night at Cullyamurra Waterhole on the Cooper Creek.
Just as Banjo Patterson had mused, we are now "on the Cooper, where the western drovers go".
(At the time, he was a bored Sydney law clerk, not yet even aspiring to become an iconic Australian poet, simply dreaming about what would later become known as a "sea change".)
We took the opportunity to kayak to the Innamincka Choke, where a short stroll on the banks leads to a substantial aboriginal art site.
On these desert waterholes, whistling kites are plentiful, and earn their name with their noisy calls.
After a brief stop in Innamincka, we headed out to Coongie Lake. We had planned to reach here almost five years ago on our test drive, but were thwarted by rain. It is the only desert lake we visited that had water, and there were wetland birds in abundance. The branch of the Cooper that fills the lake also had water, along with huge numbers of turtles. Caspian terns patrolled the skies alongside the whistling kites, while pelicans and cormorants fished from the surface. Pink eared ducks, red necked avocets, and shelducks foraged in the shallows, while ringnecks, red-rumps, and the almost ubiquitous white plumed honeyeaters frequented the redgums that line the river's edge. The kayaking, hiking, and birdwatching opportunities are extensive, and we took full advantage.
Turning north, we covered the worst stretch of desert road on our route north, passing through Cordillo Downs which is home to Australia's largest shearing shed (88 stands). We've seen some unusual shearing sheds on our travels, with this one joining those at Mungo NP and Dangalli NR as being particularly noteworthy. This one looks more like a munitions bunker than a shearing shed, but such are the consequences of limited building materials in this remote area. Definitely a stop on any shearing shed tour of Australia (despite the fact that the station is now exclusively cattle).
We stopped in Birdsville for a quick kayak on the Birdsville Billabong, and to swap stories with Karsten at the Birdsville Studio, another victim of PC Club.
Imagine our surprise when we found diesel in Birdsville that was cheaper than anything we'd seen in months, including Sydney!
Birdsville and Thargomindah both obtain drinking water from hot artesian bores. Until recently, the hot water was piped directly through town and each house had a water cooler. Now there are central cooling ponds, and the residents were forced to replace their coolers with heaters. Of course the central coolers were designed by non-locals with little comprehension of the heat, so the supposedly cold water is often hot. The locals turn off their water heaters, and use them as storage to allow the water to cool down. It's an odd concept to have hot water on tap and need to conserve cold water.
Continuing north to Bedourie, we passed massive numbers of flock bronzewings watering near the Eyre Creek. We had picked up odd jobs here and there along the way, but at Bedourie we stayed a couple of nights to complete them all. They included some station work, and it was a pleasure to indulge in the station lifestyle once again.
As we were preparing to leave the station, a shake of the spares highlighted a cracked weld. The station manager was only too happy to weld it up for us, and was even apologetic that he had no black paint to touch it up for us. You can't help but love country hospitality. Thanks, Jon!
Taking another diversion from the straightest path, we headed briefly east to Diamantina Gates National Park. The gates are a small range of hills that constrain the channels of the Diamantina River into a narrow gap. The result is a lush bush setting in the middle of the desert, with ample long waterholes for kayaking. Being a national park, the cattle numbers are low (but not zero), so the native grasses are able to show what the country can look like in the middle of a drought. A long loop drive through the park explores the varitey of landscapes and ecosystems the park protects.