Towards Cobar

Sunday 17^th April

The road from BROKEN HILL to WILCANNIA is dead flat with lots of long straights. You may remember our little game of keeping a record of the longest straights we had been on. To date our best was 21.8km near WARRACKNABEAL on the road between HORSHAM and SWAN HILL.  By the look of our camp 5 Map, we could well break our record today.  Not far out of BROKEN HILL we hit our first big one, 32.1km, a new record, then just after WILCANNIA that was broken by a 34.2 km beauty. 

The country side was just rough scrub and harsh looking grasses, but all very green.  Trying to be the first to spot wildlife became a good game to help pass the time.  We saw the occasional sheep, cattle beast, emu and kangaroo, but more goats than anything.  No wonder, as it looked like perfect goat habitat.

Christel had another stint at driving while towing the van, and after cautiously pulling out of our caravan park in BROKEN HILL, soon settled into the rhythm, and happily drove for the next two hours.

After 200 odd km, we got to WILCANNIA where we stopped for fuel and a look around.  There was nothing to see except a few aboriginal kids wandering about.  The guy at the garage told us that the road to WHITE CLIFFS was open, but any other road that wasn’t  sealed,  was closed, so that put a stop to our plans of getting from WHITE CLIFFS to CAMERON CORNER.  On the strength of that we decided we would also give WHITE CLIFFS a miss, as we had always intended to go to COOBER PEDY anyhow, and they both had similar attractions.

So it was on towards COBAR, a further 260 km to the east.  It was going to be a long day’s travel.  At least the road was good, and with the long flat straights, it meant we could set the cruise control to about 95 kph, and sit back and enjoy the ride.  As we left WILCANNIA we crossed over the Darling River which looked like the Waitara in flood.  A cacky brown sludge with mud for about 10 meters up the banks as a result of the recent floods up near its’ headwaters in Queensland.

At about 3.00 pm we pulled in to a roadside rest area, intending to have a cuppa before doing the last 70 odd km to COBAR.  There was quite a large area under the trees beside the rest area, and there were about half a dozen other vans already stopped there obviously intending to camp for the night.  Cameron suggested we do the same.  I suspect he had had enough of travelling for the day, so that’s what we did.

We were soon comfortably set up under the trees, enjoying a beer and cooking tea on our slide out BBQ.  This is what life on the road is all about.  Stop where you want to as you don’t have to be anywhere at any time.   We had travelled 408 km for the day, the longest so far with the van, and with Christel now happily sharing the driving, it had been a breeze.  By nightfall we had been joined by about another 6 vans, so there were at least a dozen of us camped for the night at the rest area.