Saturday, 9/29 Cobar to Topar Roadhouse

A shorter day of driving

     We didn't leave our room until 10:20 after sleeping in, showering, a little laundry, looking for a bakery, and breakfast.

     The clean blue skies had returned and we finally got back on the road. More of the same as yesterday. I know the area gets really hot in the summer, and I don't know anything about the fertility of the soil, but trees and grasses are abundant here, so it just seems incongruous that we didn't see any small farms at all the whole day. It's got to be better land than most of the farmers in India or Africa manage on. There are some cattle and sheep scattered about in the trees and clearings, but the feral goats far outnumber them. We saw more farms in Iceland. It's further evidence of how unpopulated the country is.

     Note from Diana 10/2: I just talked to the man who tends the reservoir for the power company and who built the nice rest area where we have camped the last couple nights. He asked if this was far different land than in the States and I told him we had a lot like this in our SW, but there would be a lot of cattle on it and more people living. He said they graze mostly sheep instead. He also said, however, that this is really good conditions as we are seeing it now. Back before their 10 year drought broke at the end of 2010, there was not a green blade of grass to be seen, and there were dust storms all the time. Apparently when it did finally rain, they really got a lot. I asked if normal was somewhere in between and he gave me the impression that normal was cycles like what I've described. Though I do think 10 years was a long drought even for them.

     We crossed the Darling River at the small town of Wilcannia. The Darling isn't much wider than the Kokosing River in Knox county, but it's slow meandering course allowed steamers to supplant drovers as the means of transporting goods in and out of western NSW in the mid 1800's. An old iron vertical-rise bridge crosses the Darling in Wilcannia. The road now crosses on a concrete span bypassing the old bridge since trains and now trucks carry the commerce of the land.

     Wilcannia used to be fairly prosperous, with stately sandstone buildings lining the streets. Now it's nearly a ghost town. It has a mostly aboriginal population, and seems reminiscent of the American Indian reservations in South Dakota or Arizona. A sad statement about the impact of European culture on indigenous peoples.

Courthouse

This town has seen better days

     The outback really starts at the Darling River in Wilcannia, although the town of Nyngan 300 km earlier stakes that claim. Here the trees quickly disappear and the horizon widens. There is a fruit fly exclusion zone just east of Broken Hill so we wanted to eat up as much of our fruit and vegetables as possible before getting there. We stopped for the evening at the Topar roadhouse a couple hours before sunset to free camp. I cooked up the remaining veggies mixed with penne for dinner, topped with Tasty of course.

Cooking dinner at Topar Roadhouse

Pretty quiet except for the occasional Road Train passing by...choo choo

      We shared the shelter with an older Aussie couple sitting at the picnic table and listening to the AFL championship game. He was a large toothless man in sweat pants and a shabby fleece jacket, and wore a white toupee that looked like an old seagull wing. She was plump and tan and wrinkled and smoked skinny cigarettes almost nonstop. We walked over and greeted them and said we'd seen a little 'footy' on the TV and that it seemed like an exciting game.

“It is if your team is winning,” the man replied laughing.

“Is your team winning?”

“Nah, they didn't even make the playoffs. And her team hasn't made the finals for the last 35 years”

“You don't cheer for the same team?”

“You've got to have something to fight about!”

     But they were engrossed in the game nonetheless and obviously had a favorite between the two finalists, and while I cooked dinner we could hear them groaning or cheering as the final minutes ticked away. They were happy at the outcome and after we finished eating we visited, they showed off their ute camper to us and we spent a couple hours talking about traveling in the Outback. They're an affectionate couple who share our love of travel, and that made us compadres for the evening.

     The subtle colors of sunset encompassed the 360 degree flat, treeless horizon, and except for the rare car or road train passing, the silence was sublime.