Home now and four days work under the belt already! We ( my old mate and I ) met SWEETWILL at the Ben Hall's
Cave camp and a nicer bloke would be hard to find. Totally independant, capable and good humoured. A good man to travel with. We eventually gave him the U. H. F. handle of ' Good Ole Bill '.
We were always going to get off the bitumen as much as was practicable and Sweetwill said " I'll follow you ". We threaded past Lake Burcher to
Condobolin then West Euabalong to Mt. Hope. Here is our first iconic pub stop right on the edge of the Outback. We followed the railway maintenance track and bush camped to be woken at 3am by the India-Pacific roaring through heading to the west. Caught out by
water over the road both sides of the railway track the next day through
Roto on the way to Trida ..... . . . . . .
I could write a story about the trip but how much space should I take up? Suffice to say we did the
Darling River Run. The rivers at
Wentworth are up to the banks. You can stand on the grass and dabble your toes in the
water ! Every dam I saw is full and every lake. Just take a look at the
Menindee Lakes system. WOW ! I pitched my tent 3ft from the waters edge.
At
Wilcannia the golf club is a good place for a cool drink and of course there's
Tilpa and
Louth. At
Bourke they're saying they could do with some rain . Through
Brewarrina and
Walgett to
Burren Junction where they've put a fence around the
bore baths since last I was there. And the baths at Pilliga is a great stop. There is no
bush camping this side of
Bourke so we pubbed it on the way home.
To conclude, the whole State looks good. I've never seen so much
water or so many healthy crops - even way out. And the roads are that good you could have taken your family
sedan even though we took the roads less travelled. But it was dry of course. Had there been any rain at all I would have been thankfull for my old 'Cruiser. I must mention the
wildflowers. Tiny yellow and whites, and purple orchid - like flowers on bushy plants, yellow on the grader humps and spoon drains and sometimes the track was an avenue of green and yellow with the wattle blosom. 3000kms. On hindsight we should have taken more time but time was always going to be a limiting factor. We saw a lot and had a lot of fun. I love the Outback. Happy travelling.