July 8

An absolutely freezing day – maximum was supposed to be 14⁰ but with the wind-chill was probably a lot lower. Mum did a couple of loads of washing early and we then headed out to visit the Fort Bourke Stockade. It was a historically interesting place as explorer Major Mitchell was supposed to have built a stockade on the bank of the Darling River – the one we saw was supposed to be a replica but if this was the case it wouldn’t have provide much shelter from a marauding kangaroo, let alone wild aboriginals. We also visited Fred Hollows grave in Bourke Cemetery and learnt more about this amazing Australian and his contribution to so many people, which was pioneered in the Bourke area.

Undoubtedly the day’s highlight was the Bourke tour, with Mateship Tours and guide Stewart, from the Bourke Information Centre. He was an excellent guide – humorous, full of information and very passionate and positive about everything to do with Bourke. He made the point that the only things people hear via the media are the negatives – the aboriginal issues, drunkenness etc and that Bourke was really a much better place than that. Despite his positiveness it was pretty hard not to notice that all the shops in the main street had their windows and entrances protected by roller shutters. The Commonwealth Bank doesn’t even have windows!

The first half of the tour was around the town – different buildings, local identities and so on. After stopping at one of the pubs for a drink break it was on to the agricultural part of the tour. We visited a lime orchard, saw lots and lots of grapevines and citrus orchards. One orchard we visited was under receivership because the state government had cut the water allocation by 2/3. The receivers weren’t interested in harvesting the fruit so the oranges were just being allowed to fall off and rot on the ground. The guide provided us with plastic shopping bags and told us to help ourselves. Seemed rather a waste but nobody refused the opportunity. Then it was on to a cotton gin – non-operational because of insufficient water to produce a crop this year. The next stop was at a farm water storage hundreds of acres in size where we were able to photograph a magic sunset across the water. The final stop was at a jojoba plantation. Jojoba is an interesting crop – it grows as a shrub about 1 – 2 metres in height; they plant 1 row of male plants to fertilise 19 rows of females; the seeds are produced as a crop about every four years and the seeds simply fall to the ground to be picked up by a machine rather like a street sweeper.

At the end of the tour it was extremely cold and we were very pleased to make our way into the caravan and turn on the fan heater. It’s only small but does a great job of keeping us warm!

July 7

We weren’t able to leave Dubbo until 8.30 am as we had to wait until Reception opened at 8. Once we left Dubbo we were in Road Train country and we were only a few kilometres out of Dubbo when the first one, loaded with wool, passed us. They create an enormous draft of air as they pass and the mirror with van extension mirror attached was forced in against the driver’s window - even though I had an occy strap attached and hooked onto the guard! Just before Nyngan one passed with such force that the extension mirror was ripped off! At the same time we ran into some rain so it was all happening. All the excitement warranted a coffee break in Nyngan – we chose the local bakery and were rewarded with the special of the day – coffee and Black Forest cake. Beautiful!!!! Mum couldn’t drink all her coffee so she took it with her as we hit the road again. The road map shows the Mitchell Highway between Nyngan and Bourke as a straight line – it’s pretty accurate! We travelled 40 km out of Nyngan before we came to the first bend – definitely no more than 10 bends along the whole highway. Lunch was at Byrock, in front of the Mulga Creek Pub. I never cease to be amazed at the ingenious ways people in the outback have to raise money for the Flying Doctor Service. The Mulga Creek Pub has a number of non-operational parking meters out the front with a sign indicating that parking donations go to the FDS. Each parking meter was just a giant sized money box! Five and a half hours after leaving Dubbo we arrived in Bourke – not too bad considering we’d had a couple of stops and were just poking along at 80 kph. Kidman’s Camp Caravan Park is 7 km north of Bourke and is quite nice. Plenty of water (at the moment) so the lawns are all nice and green. The Darling River at Bourke is carrying quite a bit of water but further downstream things are a bit grimmer. The country around here is greener than further south, thanks to rain earlier in the year. TV reception is pretty crappy – we have a very snowy ABC and Impartja and that’s it!!!

July 6

Started the day off a bit slowly – went looking for square-head Allen keys. One of the screws in the awning worked it’s way loose – I’m not even sure if such an item exists – Mitre 10 certainly didn’t have any. We managed to improvise by using a normal screw-driver and I think it will hold.

After seeing an ad in a local magazine we decided to visit the Village Bakery for morning tea – coffee and an apple pie with fresh cream (which we shared!). The Bakery has won national awards for pie-making in 2003 – 2005 so we thought it was worth investigating. It was a good decision! Another outstanding local attraction with a roaring fire to keep the cold at bay, not to mention lots of other delicacies and subs to make Subway green with envy.

Another visit to the Zoo, this time for only 3 hours, allowed us to get photos of some of the animals which were a little uncooperative yesterday. We also timed our visit to catch the African elephants’ keeper talk – it was thoroughly interesting and entertaining as the elephants used their skills to manoeuvre some large objects around. More photos of monkeys and lemurs were added to yesterdays’ collection. Between us we have about 800 photos from the zoo. Anyone for a slide night!

After a late lunch we headed in to town so Helen could have a swim at the RSL Club, only to find that it had closed at 1.00 pm.

We’ve been quite impressed with Dubbo. Although we’ve been through here many times and visited a couple of times for softball, we’ve never really had a good look around. The shopping centre is excellent and there are lots of playing fields, although they are suffering quite a bit from the drought.

We head off to Bourke tomorrow and with the forecast predicting rain I’ve got my fingers crossed we get on the road before it starts. Wet weather might be a bit of a handicap in Bourke especially as our day at Gundabooka National Park involves a fair bit of dirt road travel.

July 5

Decided to start the day by visiting the local Farmers’ Market – held on the 1st & 3rd Saturdays of each month. This was a real eye-opener – nothing like the crummy markets in and around Wollongong. The fruit and vegetables were outstanding both in quality and price. We were a bit disappointed we weren’t on our way home because we could have really stocked up. Lots of apples from around Orange, citrus fruits from Narromine, potatoes, pumpkins etc etc. It was obviously very popular with locals going by the huge number present. There were stalls selling the usual jams and pickles and even bags of sheep dung!
We arrived at Western Plains Zoo about 9.30 and didn’t leave until six hours later! We had the choice of walking or driving and chose ... to drive! There were other options – you could hire a bike ($15 / 4 hrs) or an electric cart ($65 / 3 hrs). The road circuit is 6 km while there’re 15 km of walking trails! Every 100 – 200m there’s a stop for the next animal enclosure.
The whole zoo is absolutely excellent. The enclosures allow a good view of almost every animal – some you can get quite close to. We could almost have reached out and patted the zebras – they were feeding inside the electric fence at the bottom of the bank we were standing on. The lions and tigers were a little more distant but the zoom lens on the digital camera allowed us to get up pretty “close”.
In front of the kiosk area are a number of small islands inhabited by spider monkeys, ring-tailed lemurs and black & white ruffed lemurs. Their antics were very entertaining – we could have sat and watched them for hours!
The good thing about the ticketing system for the zoo is that it entitles you to go back the next day free of charge. There are a few things we missed so we may well take advantage of that tomorrow.

July 4

Left Wollongong at 6.15 am and made good time to Penrith, well as much as speed limits and traffic would allow! However it took us 3 hours to get from home to Lithgow (180 km) where we made the obligatory stop at McDonalds. Why so long? Well it was a long uphill climb but I really doubt we could have done it faster – a combination of 60 kph speed limits, school zones, traffic and road work conspired to slow us down.

The weather station inside McDonalds indicated the temperature was 7.6⁰ while the wind chill was 5.7⁰ so it was pretty cool!

A tail wind all the way from Lithgow was a big help with fuel consumption and ensured we used about the usual amount of fuel for the distance travelled. Normally, when towing, we can cover about 500 km before needing to switch over to the second tank – we did 470 km before switching over on this leg of the trip. The other thing which probably helped was the fact that we weren’t carrying any water in the van – a full tank equals 60 L / 60 kg! We gambled on Dubbo water being OK so will fill the van’s tank with water before leaving here.

We pulled in to the caravan park at 2.00 pm so we made pretty good time. We found out that the temperature here this morning was -2, the coldest day Dubbo has had for some time. Thank heavens it’s going to be warmer tomorrow.

The caravan park is quite good and VERY popular – all the sites are full tonight. We learnt in 2004 that the best time to arrive at a park is early afternoon before things start to get busy – nothing’s changed!