It was very cold last night. William woke up at 6am and crawled up the ladder to us and declared he was ‘high in the sky!’. He was cold also so snuggled in with us for ½ hour. He was too restless so we were all up by 6.45am. As the sun was behind our tent and it was windy, it was very cold outside. We ate our brekkie in the tent and put William straight in the car where he was out of the wind while we packed up. We were driving out of the caravan park around 8am and had to duck into town to get petrol. The lady at the servo even commented how cold it was, and that it was unusual to be this cold at this time of year.
We know we can get around 300kms to a tank of petrol, and we wanted to avoid Wilcannia again due to the unfriendly locals, so we headed for the Emmdale roadhouse which was about 100 kms past it. We stopped once before Wilcannia for a toilet break and to let Will play on the playground. We had seen a lot of emus on the side of the road already as well as more eagles feeding on road kill. It’s pretty cool watching them fly away as they are so big. You need to watch where you are driving though as they are pretty slow to take off. We drove through Wilcannia and made it to Emmdale at about 12.30pm. We thought our petrol tank was about 60L and we put 62L in, so we must have been pretty much empty. We had stopped at this roadhouse on our way over and enjoyed Roast Lamb & Gravy Rolls and Chips for lunch again. We had met a guy and his young son who were also having lunch. After having a chat about where we were headed he told us about a Caravan Park on the north side of Bourke that was quite nice and that the middle of Bourke can be quite rough. We then headed for Cobar. Again we saw many emus on the side of the road as well as sheep, cattle and goats; although we are unsure whether the goats were on farms or wild.
We pulled into Cobar and got some more petrol and also stopped at the IGA for a few more supplies. Kelley had bought the wrong size nappies for William in Ceduna (a size too small) so we needed to get more of them. We called the Bourke Council before heading out of town to make sure the road leading there was open; it had been shut when we drove over a few weeks ago due to the flooding. We also had to ring Brewarrina Council to make sure the road from Bourke to Walgett was also open – lucky all the major roads were open with a 5 tonne limit.
We drove through to Bourke, passing many large cattle or sheep stations on the way. There were also a lot of goats again. The roads were very wide and smooth (especially compared to Beaudesert roads). As we got into Bourke you could see all the water on the side of the road that was residual from the floods. A rest area was shut as it was still pretty much under water. There were a lot of birdlife on the water, as I bet it’s been a while since they’ve had water at all. We drove through town and headed towards the Caravan Park we had been told about. We checked in and are so happy this guy told us about it. The grounds are lovely – the sites are huge and all grassed. The amenities are also nice with a real country feel with horseshoes and wooden doors. We had dinner and Will was in bed just after 8pm. We had a big day driving and we did over 600 kms. Will wasn’t very happy to be in the car for most of today, but we aren’t surprised – we’ve done over 9,000kms in 4 ½ weeks.
We are heading to Gunnedah tomorrow, which is another big day at over 500 kms.