Cameron Corner or Bust

Saturday 16^th April.

Happy Birthday Bruce.  We hope to be in TIBOOBURRA by tonight on our way to CAMERON CORNER, so we will have a drink for you then.  Well that was the plans this morning.

You may recall we had been in touch with the Information Centre at TIBOOBURRA, and they had assured us the roads we needed to travel were all open.  So this morning we finished loading the car with our camping gear, packed up the van and moved it into storage at our camping ground.  It cost $30 for the 3 or 4 nights we were going to be away. 

All packed up, we fuelled up and headed out of town.  About 5 km out we came across a big road conditions sign, and yes, you guessed it, the road from BROKEN HILL to TIBOOBURRA was closed. Shit.  The car’s all packed up with our gear, the caravan’s in storage, and we’ve just paid $30 to leave it there for 3 or 4 nights.  What do we do now? 

Thinking that maybe the sign wasn’t right up to date, (Sometimes it takes a couple of days for the information to get through from some of the more remote towns), we decided to check with the local police, so back into town we go. We explained that on Thursday we had rung TIBOOBURRA and had been reassured the road was open.  They were more than helpful, with the information they had, which was also about a day old, but yes according to them the road was closed.

The cop we spoke to also gave us a friendly reminder of the fines we faced should we choose to travel along a closed road.  I’ll put them down here just for your information.  It is $1000 per wheel, including any spare wheels carried on the vehicle, for every kilometre travelled, past the Road Closed sign.  So let’s say you are a smart arsed bastard who thinks you are a good enough driver to overcome a few hazards on the closed road, and head off past the sign.  50 km down the road you get bogged and have to call for help.  Not only will the tow truck smack you for about $600, your real troubles start once the cops hear about it.  Let’s say you are one of the average Toyota 4 wheel drivers around here, and carry your standard 2 spare wheels. That’s $6000 per km x 50 km = $300,000.  Ouch.   We decided we would forfeit our $30 storage fee instead, and go and pick up our caravan.

Back at our campground, the friendly manager was quite surprised by our quick return, and after Christel sobbed out our story, and turned on her charm, he refunded our $30.  We thanked him by saying we didn’t want to stay in his campground any more.  This was mainly because our site was under a gum tree which 3000 Corellas roosted in every night, and consequently we had the odd bird dropping on the van and awning, as well as the deafening racket just on dark every night and then again at daylight each morning as they came and went.

We moved to another camp ground and set up again.  We then went into town to have a birthday drink for Bruce.  See Bruce, even through all our troubles, we still remembered your birthday, and to plan our next move.  We decided that tomorrow we would head towards WILCANNIA, and possibly up to WHITE CLIFFS.  WHITE CLIFFS is an Opal Mining town, and like COOBER PEDY, the locals live underground. We had heard mixed reports about how safe it was to stay at WILCANNIA and decided we would only stay there if we felt OK about the place.  Also, there was a road of sorts running from WHITE CLIFFS across to TIBOOBURRA, so it was possible we could get to CAMERON CORNER from there. Tomorrow we would know.