July 13

A slow, steady drive to Charleville. Like most of the countryside since we passed Dubbo it’s just flat, flat, flat! But never boring (at least in my opinion). The amazing thing about the countryside we passed through was the phenomenal grass growth – obviously a legacy of the flooding and rain earlier in the year. Admittedly the grass has died off, but there’s certainly plenty of feed available to stock. The amount of road-kill reinforces the fact that it has probably been a very good season for wildlife too.
Although the population here is about the same as Bourke it’s a much more prosperous looking town – wide streets, minimal aboriginal population, no roller-shuttered shop fronts. The next obvious thing about the town is the number of historic buildings – a couple of really impressive looking hotels. Noticeable is the lack of tall shade trees around town – their absence reinforces the fact that it is normally a very hot place. Even in the middle of winter the town has a hot look about it. In fact today has been quite warm – short sleeve shirts type warm.
After checking in to the caravan park – quite full even when we got her at 11.15 am – we paid a visit to the Visitors’ Centre where we went on a walk which identified the local tree species. It was excellent as we often find ourselves wondering, “What sort of tree is that?” as we drive along.
Tonight we’re booked in for the Bilby Experience. Currawinya NP has a bilby enclosure, which the public are not allowed to visit, and in 2001 it was populated with bilbies bred here in Charleville.
BTW, I forget to mention in my last report that just as we approached Hungerford on Friday we passed a convoy of five road trains – four with 3 trailers and one with 2, a total of 14 trailers all loaded with cattle. They’d stopped to drop dust before passing the 300 m through Hungerford. Imagine being caught behind that convoy – you might as well stop and camp because you’d never get past and the amount of dust they would throw up would be horrific. Another snippet of information I picked up at the Royal Mail was that it costs $8.50 per head per km to transport cattle – the ones we saw were off to agistment somewhere in NSW.